The Horsham Demons senior football side have been invited to take part in the inaugural edition of the Country Premiers Challenge Tournament in Bendigo in March.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The tournament will see seven of country Victoria’s best teams compete across three consecutive days for the inaugural Country Premiership Cup.
In addition to Horsham, North Bendigo, Maryborough, Lagoon-Serpentine, Swan Hill, Harcourt and Yarram have been confirmed as participants.
Each team will play two preliminary round games of four 20 minute quarters, with the two best performed sides to play off in the grand final on the final day of competition on Sunday March 31.
Horsham football director Terry Arnell said it was pleasing to be invited to take part in the first edition of the tournament.
“The prestige of being invited when you look at some of the other teams that are in there, being involved in that sort of concept against other great Victorian sides is a really exciting opportunity for us,” Arnell said.
Arnell said the Demons will use the tournament as a pre-season workout to challenge themselves ahead of the 2019 season.
“The timing of the tournament is really ideal for us to have a pre-season hit out, and the format looks like it will be really suitable for where our guys are going to be at fitness wise,” he said.
“We’ll look to take a fit young side over there and see how we go against the other great sides in Victoria.
“There will certainly be some strong competition there so we will hope to showcase the strength of our area and no doubt others will be as well.”
RELATED: Demons announce A Grade coaches
Kevin Sheedy has also been confirmed as the tournament’s ambassador and will be speaking at the event on the Saturday night.
Tournament manager Russell Boyd said he was hoping the event would become a showcase of solely reigning premier teams.
In addition to Horsham, Yarram from the North Gippsland league are the only other reigning premier for this year’s event, while North Bendigo were defeated grand finalists from last season.
“In time we’d like to establish this as a competition for premiership teams from the previous year and make it a real pre-season showcase,” Boyd said. “It can be hard to secure practice matches against equal opposition, so we think this is a really good opportunity for the clubs.”