WHAT A 7 YEAR REBUILD LOOKS LIKE AT LOCAL/AMATEUR LEVEL

Tomorrow my senior team who I played with for the first half the year play in their first grand final since I've been there, and even before that in 2009.

Before this year the seniors have only managed to reach the finals once, being beaten by just 3pts with of our top 5 or 6 injured and out from the week before.

My club is tiny off-field and huge on-field.

We have senior, reserves, thirds, over 35's and over 50's men's teams, a women's football team and 4 netball sides.

We have the worse facilities in the world and were even kicked off our ground last year by the league, leaving us nowhere to play home games until we found an available ground in March of this year.

We're battlers, simple as that.

We don't pay players, nor do we have the cash to do so.

Everyone who plays at South Yarra, plays there because they want to, even though the grass is a lot greener pretty much everywhere else.

After we won our way though last weekend I sat down and just started writing about my time there.

Strap yourself in...

BUILDING SYFC 2011 – 2019

2011

- My very first game in the reserves for South Yarra was an away game against Caulfield in round 7, 2011. We went 2-4 to start the season with a few 100+ pt beltings in that lot but we won this day 259 - 15 and I had 1 kick

 - Ressies finished 3^rd losing the prelim and the seniors finished 6^th for memory

- From that year we currently have 6 blokes still playing at the club in Pres, Jewellsey, Geoff, Canizzo, T-Mac and Taz who’s worked himself from ressies full forward to our current senior captain. Taz and T-Mac will be playing tomorrow.

2012

- 19/22 senior players leave the club in 1 foul swoop signalling a long year ahead

- The first game for season 2012 we had 3 blokes from the previous year’s senior team (T-Mac, Cory, Marnesy), 9 blokes from our reserves team the previous year and the rest were 1^st game players for the club and we copped a 100pt belting under lights on a Friday night

It wasn't until round 15 v Black Rock that we got our first win after starting 0-14, by 52pts

- We finished bottom of the ladder but because the 2^nd bottom team didn’t pay their league bills, they got relegated and we stayed up

- This is actually year 1 of this current rebuilt where on top of T-Mac and Taz who were already there, current senior players started at the club such as Jamie A, Pane, Sauce, T-Rog, Higgo, Sauce as well as Jamie bazant. Anthony Denaro and brothers from a different mother Nick and Anthony Pane (now Co-President) came on board, both currently having indirect effects on the senior team today. This season also started our accidental affiliation with the Australian Ultimate Frisbee team where "Frisbee" starting playing with us and many other "frisbee's" would go onto to wear the Yarra jumper in the coming years.

2013

- 2013 brought more players to the club who have impacted this current group in Gleds (his 2^nd of 3 stints with the club), Woody, Macca, Dan Russell and Tom Hanney joining the club

- Staying up in div 2 didn't help our on-field success and we went winless losing 8 games by 100pts or more with 4 of those 150+

2014

- Relegated to div3 for 2014

- This year saw more current senior players start at the club in Jarrod Gloury, Mundi, Horse, along with the Smith brothers and the great Jordy Cellini

- Round 1 we knocked off Hallam won by 4 goals in a Friday night game – our first senior win in 550 odd days

- In round 3 v Sandown a young hack started the game in the 2’s, had 8 touches in 4mins and went up to the 1’s for that day after a late out, never to be seen again at 12pm – a young Kizza

- Round 6 v Endeavour Hills saw the debut of another frisbee, Ish

- We won 5 games and improved our % from 36 to 81

2015

- 2015 saw the inclusion of a bunch of ex-Silvan boys Steg, Dimma, Whyatt as well as Big V, Zavvy, and Hayden forming a fair chunk of our senior team right now

- Another pivotal moment was half way through the season when 2 Gippsland randoms showed up who we now know as a past captain of the club Rusty and a bubbling personality Tucky – both solid inclusions to the Yarras for very different reasons

- We improved again with 8 wins and a % of 100

2016

- 2016 brought with us now Women’s Coach, Senior Runner and walking injury Onions and Bender

- This is the year we’d been building to since 2012 and we managed to make finals with 12 wins and a % of 154 – unfortunately we all know how that ended (above)

2017

- 2017 came with the additions of Harry, Smithy, Birdy, Ed, and then Willard and Eric arrived mid year while upstarts Alby and Patty ran around in the 3’s, with an expectation to go further again then last year

- In round 1 we beat Doveton by 8pts, a team who months later were playing off for the div 2 flag after rolling through both div 3and div 2 in successive years, showing our potential

- Round 4 v Moorabbin we lost by 7pts who were the only team we lost to below us on the ladder that season 

- Round 14 v Black Rock we lost by 6 goals in an 8pt game for what would end up being 5^th spot and that Morrabbin loss haunts us even more now

- In the end we didn’t improve upon last year with 12 wins again, a % of 178 but no finals

2018

- In 2018 the SFL made themselves a little 4^th division leaving us as the bottom cut off point for div 3. On top of that, a cashed up Hampton Park and a 5 win team with only 1 loss by more than 20pts were coming down from div 4 as well. It seemed like it was going to be 2012 all over again and it pretty much was but Bryce Denaro joined the might Yarras and Canizzo makes his return to the club.

- Between rounds 16 and 17 the SFL kicked us off our ground, deeming it unsafe all of a sudden although it had been a pile of shit for 10yrs, at the request of another team who didn't want to play there. (NOTE - the GM at the time had been in the job for 6 months, made this pathetic decision then resigned because running a league of 4 football and 10 netball divisions was "more work then expected")

- With 3 powerhouse teams and at 1 point a 30+ player unavailability list, we scraped out 2 wins and went home

- The completion of this season saw the resignation of Daisy as senior coach after a relatively fruitful 3 years at the helm. His addition to the club back in 2016 was as big as any mentioned on this list for mine, especially for keeping this team together in 2018 through an absolute shit storm. His son Scott (Steg) is now Captain-Coach of the senior team.

2019

- No ground, no coach, no worries – we drop back to div 4 with a new coach and a new outlook on life. We throw some fresh blood into the mix with the likes of Fingers, JC, Brenton, Wombat, Cronin and the super rise of Dillon from 3’s to 2’s to 1’s in the 1 season 

- Round1 v Lyndhurst we lose lost by 11 goals after going in with 8 new players in the senior team, just 1 practice match and then copping 4 injuries before half time against the premiership favourite

- Round 8 v Lyndhurst we win by 10pts coming back from 5 goals down in the 2nd quarter to take down the only unbeaten team in the comp

- Round 16 v Frankston we win by 4 goals after a blistering 44-6 first quarter to give us the double chance in finals

-Prelim final v Frankston we win by 3 goals which puts us where we are today – Grand Final bound against a team we’ve gone 2-2 with so far this year (Lyndhurst)

It’s taken 7 years to build this team and get it to where it needs to be to be a contender and we now have that opportunity right here, right now.

Off-feild assistance in that time by the likes of Hilly, Owen, Bernard, Mouse, Dev, Gleds, Craig Kealy, Barbs, Arland, Tonna, Tucky, Geoff, T-Rog, Pipes, Lachy, the Netballers, the Women Footballers  and countless others has been nothing short of remarkable.

This week we were able to secure Sandringham's VFL oval to train on as our ground has 2 lights where you can barely see the ball half the time.

We were able to secure current Sandringham coach Aaron Hamil to chat with us and at 1 point he was talking about off-field assistance and pointed to a table of those blokes while also mentioning the countless others that must be involved - no Aaron, that table of 4 - 5 blokes and the playing group is all it is.

Tomorrow is huge, we all can't wait for it so let the best team win.

SOUTH YARRA GRAND FINAL TEAM 2019

B - Gloury (2014)    T-Rog (2012)   T-Mac (2011)

HB - Harry (2017)  Taz (2011)   Dimma (2015)

C - Zavvy (2015)   Rusty (2015)  Patty (2017)

HF - JC (2019)   Fingers (2019)   Canizzo (2007/18)

F - Dillon (2019)   Mundi (2014)   Bird (2017)

R - Sauce (2012)   Gleds (2010/13/19)   Steg (2015)  

IC - Jamie A (2012)   Wombat (2019)  Horse (2014)   Higgo (2012)