Ecstatic Spotswood players celebrate their premiership victory. 70575 Picture: KRISTIAN SCOTT
BY MICHAEL ESPOSITO
“I kept him goalless which is always handy.”
That was William Phillips’ understated summation of his performance on Romain Grenville.
But it was more than handy – it was inspiring. Spoils, intercepts, tackles, he did it all and did not miss a beat. But then again so did Spotswood’s whole backline, which kept the league’s most dangerous forward line to just seven goals.
Deflecting the credit, Phillips said Spotswood’s midfielders were the architects of the win.
“The midfield just took over and that’s where we thought we’d win it,” he said.
“(Chris) O’Keefe, (Will) Langlands, (Jai) Audley and (Torin) Baker – it helps having blokes like that.
“A lot of people didn’t tip us for the top three. We lost a lot of players but guys like Torin Baker, no-one really knew about him but he’s up there with your (Jason) Clokes and your Chris O’Keefes.”
O’Keefe praised Phillips’ masterful job on one of Albion’s main avenues to goal
“He was absolutely brilliant. That’s the best game I’ve ever seen him play. Everybody knows how dangerous Grenville and (Shaydon) Bloomfield are and so I thought the job that Will Phillips did was fantastic and I thought Dylan Ayton did a really good job as well. Bloomfield had a little patch in the third quarter, but apart from that he had no impact.
“That goes a long way to us winning the game, and they probably don’t even realize that.”
Torin Baker, a former Geelong Football League best-and-fairest winner, was another hero for Spotswood. Missing half of the preliminary final after being struck to the head, Baker was in doubt to get up for the grand final. He ended up being named best-on-ground.
“A lot of teams don’t play much respect to him,” O’Keefe said.
“He’s a tough slow, but geez he can get the footy.
“He’s just been enormous for us all year. It’s great to have a guy like that with skill, experience, talent and works really hard. To bounce back, a lot of people didn’t think he would play, but to put in a performance like that was great.”
