THE Bears are premiers in GVL football for 2018, bringing an end to one of the greatest winning streaks of 62 by the Kyabram Football Club.
Going into Sunday’s game, you got the feeling this was going to be similar to the 2014 decider when the undefeated Benalla had one last hurdle, which was the Shepparton Swans. Why similar? A Deakin Reserve that would make it extremely hard to kick away at any stage of the game due to the howling wind.
Shepparton kicked to the Skene Street end first which provide two thirds of the scoring during the game. With scores level at quarter time it looked how far the Bombers. Then they kicked away to a handy lead at the main break after their turn to kick to the scoring end.
After the Bears’ third quarter got them back to within one point at the last change, it appeared the last quarter would be tight but with the champs still the favourite.
When Jordan Butts kicked the first goal of the last quarter, it looked like he would emulate his father, Gerard and become a Shepparton premiership player. But the Bombers quickly replied through Kayne Pettifer.
From that point on, the Bears just seemed to want this a bit more. It was an arm wrestle and was always going to go down to the last minutes with goals hard to come by.
The siren sounded as the ball was kicked inside Kyabram’s forward 50 and the flag was going to the Shepparton Bears as the celebrations begun. Ironically the score kicked by Shepparton was 63, the number of wins the Bombers were trying to achieve for three straight undefeated seasons. It wasn’t to be.
