WHEN he decided to head back to Bell Post Hill before the 2008 season, former AFL player Brent Grgic had high hopes. But given the club had not won a senior premiership since first taking to the field in the Geelong and District league in 1977, he was far from certain the drought would be broken.

But his timing could hardly have been better. Bell Post Hill has made the grand final each year since its most successful export, who played 90 games for Melbourne and Geelong, came home. Although they lost the first two, the Panthers have claimed successive flags since Grgic took over as coach for the 2010 season. And they are short-priced favourites to make it three on the trot later this year.

''To play and coach premierships at the club where I played my junior football has been a brilliant experience,'' said Grgic.

The Bell Post Hill club was only a decade old when Grgic started his progression through its junior teams. Based at Myers Reserve, on the eastern fringe of Geelong, the club had been formed after a swathe of new housing developments brought many young families to the area.

The Panthers boasted strong junior teams from the start, and soon made their presence felt at senior level, making grand finals in 1983 and '88, although they lost both. Their senior team then spent the following two decades hovering around the middle rungs of the ladder.

It wasn't until Grgic and a number of his mates returned that Bell Post Hill was able to mount another serious assault on the premiership. Grgic, who had spent the previous four seasons running around with Geelong league club Bell Park, initially came home just to play. But after senior coach Rob May stepped down following the consecutive grand final losses to Thomson and East Geelong in 2008 and '09, he was handed the reins.

Desperate to lead the club to its first senior flag, Grgic decided it was improved fitness that could make the difference. ''A lot of the hard work had already been done, and the team was looking really good, but I just wanted the boys to be a bit more professional,'' he said. ''To not win a flag in 30-odd years probably showed the club hadn't been very professional in the past.

''I didn't know how full-on our guys would want to be, but they decided to take it really seriously. The majority of them train twice a week and go to our recovery sessions on Sundays. A lot of them have joined up at the gym. I reckon we're probably now the fittest side in the comp and probably the strongest as well.''

Bell Post Hill finished second on the ladder after the 2010 home-and-away season, but when it came to the finals the Panthers' superior conditioning made the competition a one-horse race. They beat top side Werribee Centrals in the second semi-final and grand final by a combined margin of 171 points.

For Graham Lewis, who has been involved with Bell Post Hill since it first fielded a senior side in 1977, that first flag was particularly special.

''It was [a] magnificent reward for a lot of hard work,'' said Lewis, who previously served as the club president and is now the treasurer.

Last season Bell Post Hill ended its home-and-away campaign on top of the table, having lost just one game. But the grand final against North Geelong was a heart-stopping affair. The Panthers were slow out of the blocks and by the middle of the third quarter trailed by 25 points. Yet all that hard work on the track paid off when they booted seven goals to one in the final term to win by 27 points.

''My first game in the AFL is a good memory,'' Grgic said. ''I also played in an AFL grand final with Melbourne and a VFL premiership with Geelong. But to win that grand final last year was right up there with anything I've done in footy.''

Bell Post Hill's premiership teams have largely been made up of local boys. But the Panthers' success in senior ranks is being undermined by a lack of youngsters. This season, Bell Post Hill's only junior team is an under-12s side. And if it wasn't for the hard work of Grgic and a couple of others, the shortage of youngsters would be even worse.

''We spent the summer going to primary schools in the area, holding clinics, and that's how we got the under-12 team together, which I am coaching as well,'' Grgic said. ''I coach the under-12s in the morning, then help out the reserves and coach the seniors in the afternoon.

''It's a lot different to when I was in the juniors. Back then we had too many kids. But we've got a soccer club right next to us, and when you look over there they've got about 200 kids playing soccer on a Saturday morning when we're struggling to get one junior team on the park.''

There's little doubt that the shortage of juniors will hurt the Panthers at senior level in the not-too-distant future. But even though a chronic back injury has restricted Grgic to two appearances in the reserves this season, things are rosy for now. Last weekend Bell Post Hill beat second-placed Thomson by 46 points. Yesterday it was aiming to overcome third-placed East Geelong.

By Adam McNicol

Article first appears The Sunday Age July 29, 2012