The Southern-Mallee Giants picked up right from where they left off in 2019, finishing second in the 2021 Wimmera Football Netball League regular season.
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The side played some quality football and finished the season two losses behind Minyip-Murtoa.
"Getting that double chance was very important," Giants' co-coach Coleman Schache said.
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"I think at times we played some good footy. We've definitely been working on our consistency throughout the year and I think it was getting better towards the back end."
The Giants had an ideal start to their season, winning their first two games, the second of which was a thriller against reigning-premiers Minyip-Murtoa.
The team had their first loss a week later, against Stawell and the result was worsened when they found out leading goalkicker Brock Orval (18 goals from three games) had suffered a season-ending knee injury.
Still, without their superstar forward, the side dusted themselves off and got on with the job, only going on to lose another two matches for the season.
"Every team cops injuries, but we were definitely unfortunate to lose Brock when we did. He's obviously an x-factor, livewire up forward," Schache said.
"To the boy's credit, we found other ways to the goals. You'd always love to have Brock out there, especially come finals time.
"Lou (White) as well, he's a bit of a heart and soul competitor for our team, so we definitely missed him after his injury."
Giants players can also hang their hat on the fact that they were the only side to beat Minyip-Murtoa all year. The Burras did defeat them by 45-points in the round 12 rematch, however, the game was extremely close until the final quarter.
Overall Schache is happy that his side has "genuinely improved".
"In general defending we've stood pretty strong, we've had good defence and defended well as a whole team," he said.
"We've been in most of the games that we've played and kept opposition teams to lower scores.
"The flip side to that is we are always working on our attacking side, to try and score more, so that's probably one of the areas that we can improve in."
As far as standout players go, Schache, co-coach Luke Mahony, Lou White, Cassidy Parish and Sam White all contributed heavily. Schache also gave special mention to youngster Jonty Ballinger and small forward Ben McGee.
"It was fantastic to see Jonty Ballinger play his first game for us," he said.
"A junior coming through, he's got some good football abilities and if he keeps working hard he'll be good for us in the future in the forward line.
"I think Benny Magee as a small forward, he's grown in confidence and he's really become an impact player and an important player in our team."
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