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wyyungWeekly Times | WHEN  Wy Yung won a premiership in 2005 in the East Gippsland Football League, Grant Mooney was playing for the opposition.

Now the Tigers’ coach is hoping he will be the one to take them all the way 10 years on.

The former Bairnsdale player and Swifts Creek premiership coach has made it two from two for grand final appearances in his tenure with Wy Yung.

Since it last won the East Gippsland premiership in 2008, Wy Yung has qualified for the grand final three times — 2009, 2011 and last year — and lost all three.

The Tigers suffered the heartbreak of a last-kick grand final loss to Stratford in last year’s decider, going down by three points.

Lindenow awaits on the day of destiny this year after the Cats delivered the 17-point knockout blow to the Swans in the preliminary final on Saturday.

But where last year Moo­ney said the Tigers went in as “underdogs”, this year Wy Yung will go into Saturday’s decider as the favourite, having finished minor premier with five more wins than its opponent.

Wy Yung beat Lindenow three times during the regu­lar season, including a 42-point win in the final home-and-away round.

Mooney said that last year the Tigers’ goal was simply to make the finals, and yet it found itself “30 seconds away from winning a grand final”.

“Then this year we recruited a couple of new players and we brought in a couple of young kids,” he said.

“We probably didn’t have any expectations at the start of the year, but we did well early and we were tracking pretty well mid-year and we thought we would probably finish top-two. To finish minor premier is a pretty good effort.”

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