Palmer said Hirst’s value was ticked off by the league late last year, but his one-point value was the first to be queried. Hirst’s value eventually went up by a point on review, but the club successfully defended the value of another player, former Frankston Dolphin Tom Simpson, whose four-point allocation later also came under question.

Somerville plays under a points cap of 39, and Palmer said retrospectively if Hirst’s new value was included in the equations there would have been games where the Eagles went over the limit.

The club was not sanctioned, and Hirst — who played at the club last year, Palmer believes, as a one-point player — says it was confident it would not be. “You can’t say one thing and then do another and then penalise them for something (that’s been) been ticked off,” he said.

It was part of a tumultuous year which saw clubs from both the Nep­ean and Peninsula competitions hold votes of no confidence — Somerville did not vote — in the MPNFL board, which later resigned.

Palmer and Hirst said they tried to keep the points issue away from the players.

The Eagles have endured a nail­biting finals run, beating Sorrento by five points in the qualifying final then three goals in the preliminary last week, but losing to Rosebud by 16 points in the second semi-final.

“It’s not good as a coach. It gets the heart ticking a bit,” Hirst said. “We’re a young side, we’re going places, as a club we’re going places, and we’re just rapt to be in this week and we’ll enjoy the week and see what happens on Saturday.”

Palmer also largely backed the statewide playing points system that will come into effect next year, saying the fact it was being brought in across all competitions would help with clarity. This week AFL South East — which assumed governance of the Nepean and Peninsula leagues in a caretaker capacity — announced the Nepean, Peninsula and South East leagues would work under a 39-point cap next season. Region general manager Jeremy Bourke said, however, clubs that won five senior games or less the previous year would be granted an extra point, and sides that did not win a game would gain another point on top of that.

Bourke said there would also be a point reduction if a club won back-to-back premierships, and another point taken off on top if the side won three flags in a five-year period. This season will be the first of relevance for those rulings.

Now Palmer is waiting nervously for Saturday.

“We know clubs will still believe we’ve cheated, and we’ve been called cheats and we’ve been called liars and we’ve been called all sorts of stuff,” he said.

“We’d like to sit down knowing independently we were right, we always knew we were, We can still remain foc­used to win out on the ground.”