THERE is a saying at the Ararat Eagles which no one is allowed to forget.<\/p>\n
\u2018None of us are as good as all of us\u2019.<\/p>\n
From the brink of collapse to the spoils of success, an odyssey painted in navy blue and white reached its climax with an eight-goal-to-two final quarter to mark a historic inaugural Mininera premiership for the Ararat Eagles.<\/p>\n
What was won on the field last Saturday reflects a club\u2019s refusal to be defined by its hardship and the strength and power of a passionate community working towards a common goal.<\/p>\n
\u201cI still can\u2019t believe it,\u201d Eagles president Nats McRoberts said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe support on Saturday was awesome. When that final siren blew you just saw the emotion on the fans\u2019 faces and there are a lot of supporters who have been on this journey with us.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re very lucky to be premiers and enjoying that with those faces who\u2019ve been with us for the last 22 years was pretty awesome.\u201d<\/p>\n
The origin story of this rags-to-riches arc dates back to a decision on the club\u2019s survival back in 2019 after the Eagles finished the 16-game season winless, which included a 509-point loss to Great Western.<\/p>\n
But with the senior squad bolstered by the return of a cohort of juniors who had since moved away, the Eagles found themselves reinvigorated; building a team which stuck together throughout two years of pandemic interruptions to ultimately taste success.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was reflecting on a few of the photos over the years and the one thing that came up was that we had seven or eight blokes who played in premierships with our under 16s, who played at the weekend in the senior grade,\u201d McRoberts said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat turned it around was those handful of blokes who came back and that was the turning point for us because once that happened it was a snowball effect. In 2020, while we didn\u2019t play any footy, we looked really strong and we were able to do quite well in 2021 and then here we are today.\u201d<\/p>\n
With the ledger squared at one win each between the Eagles and Tatyoon this season, it was the Ararat based side which prevailed in last Saturday\u2019s senior football Grand Final by 45-points.<\/p>\n
Despite only eight points separating the two sides at three quarter time, the margin blew out after an eight goal quarter by the eventual premier.<\/p>\n
The senior football Grand Final was the only senior Grand Final the Hawks did not win on the day, with four out of five Tatyoon teams winning premierships.<\/p>\n
\u201cTatyoon are very well respected and they work really well and have the utmost respect from us. They had five sides in Grand Finals at the weekend and we were one that was fortunate to beat them and we hold them in high regard,\u201d McRoberts said.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo maintain it, we\u2019ve got to keep working and hopefully we\u2019ve got a good group of people around us to push us forward.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ararat Eagles completed the ultimate rags-to-riches story last Saturday when they defeated Tatyoon to be crowned Mininera champions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1552,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"Ararat Eagles completed the ultimate rags-to-riches story last Saturday when they defeated Tatyoon to be crowned Mininera champions.","_seopress_robots_index":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"coauthors":[38],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/eagles-team-premiers-tracey-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1707&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdqUu4-p1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1551"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1551\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1551"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}