Weekly Times |TOMORROW’S Gippsland league grand final will be a fairytale whichever way the result goes.
Leongatha and Traralgon find themselves the last two teams alive after coming from outside the finals last season under a first-year coach.
Leongatha coach Beau Vernon has led his side from seventh last year to a grand final, following Sunday’s 45-point preliminary final win against Maffra.
Vernon has been wheelchair-bound since he suffered a serious spinal cord injury while playing for the Parrots back in 2012.
In the big dance Leongatha meets Traralgon, which has catapulted into a premiership playoff this year under Mark Collison after a sixth-place finish last season.
Collison, who has spent time in the VFL with the Frankston Dolphins, said both clubs had a remarkable story to tell.
“Obviously their story’s bigger with everything that Beau’s been through, and so it should be,” Collison said.
“But at the same time, we’re really confident we can put our own story together and finish it off this weekend.”
Traralgon sprung a nine-point upset win in the second semi-final on September 12, after Leongatha comfortably won their two other meetings this season by a combined 147 points.
Collison was earlier this week found guilty of striking — a charge stemming from that semi-final clash — by the Gippsland league independent tribunal, but is free to play tomorrow after receiving a severe reprimand.
READ MORE:Collison free to play grand final
Collison said the team had “improved” over the course of the year, which culminated in the stunning boilover the last time the two teams crossed paths.
“We even knew after that first round when we lost by 100 points that that wasn’t us,” Collison said.
“It was bit of a disaster, we had blokes who got injured or were crook and everything went wrong.”
Ahead of tomorrow’s decider, Vernon said he wasn’t reading too much into their last meeting, remaining confident a return to their “brand” of football would see them turn the tables.