RIGHT up until former Norwood and Sandringham powerhouse Goy Lok found Warragul Industrials’ teammate Luke Walker in the goal square for the equaliser and minutes later put his team ahead with only seconds to go, it had been a pretty good day for Phillip Island on Easter Saturday.
They’d lost the fourths but had comfortable wins in both the thirds and reserves, and also took five out of seven netball matches including A Grade and B Grade in comfortable style.
The weather was superb, ideal for the huge Easter crowd that had packed into the Cowes’ ground, the playing surface was lush, the merchandise stand was doing a roaring trade and the beer was icy cold, right to the end despite queues snaking away past the end of the clubrooms for much of the day.
It was thirsty work.
There’s little doubt this feature event of the Phillip Island Bulldogs’ season was a ranging financial success and it looked set to be a thrilling success on the field as well when the Island’s coach Cam Pedersen accepted a soft pass from Hayden Bruce after good lead up work by his brother Charlie and stretched the lead to 13 points at the 22-minute mark.
But the Dusties’ players continued to come at Phillip Island, with Wilson McGillivray hitting the post to cut the lead to two straight kicks and both Goy Lok and Kuiy Jiath continuing to provide plenty of drive out of the midfield.
Jiath attacked it in the middle, fended off his opponent and got the ball to Michael Debenham, on to the dangerous Lok and suddenly there was only a goal in it.
The ball went back into Dusties’ forward line out of the centre, but Hayden Bruce looked to have made a score-saving tackle on the half back flank and Charlie Bruce collected the loose ball superbly to relieve the pressure. However, he Dusties’ Will Gibson turned it back his team’s way and Lok ran it forward to where Luke Walker finished off in style.
The scores was 16.10 all with only seconds to go but it was the dynamic duo of Jiath and Lok who again imposed their influence on the game and between them produced a heart-stopping winner, Lok leading up to a Jiath pass and calmly slotting it through from 35 metres out.
“That was an absolute ripper,” was the comment from one spectator.
“That’s as good a game of country football as you’d see,” said another.
Admittedly, they were both Dusties' supporters.
For Phillip Island, who finished runners-up last year, and looked the winners to half time, it was possibly the one that got away against a team which finished 7th last year but with three wins from three on the board and a greatly improved list, Dusties look every bit a finalist in 2025, sitting pretty for the moment on top of the West Gippsland ladder.
Final scores: Warragul Industrials 17.10.112 def Phillip Island 16.10.106.
