Broadmeadow Magic club captain Jeremy Wilson labelled grand final week as the best week of the year as he and his teammates prepare to challenge Lambton Jaffas in Sunday’s decider at Darling Street Oval.
Wilson is hoping to assist Magic to a second premiership/championship double in as many seasons, and he said that his team are as focused as ever going into the biggest game of the season, with their sights set on cementing their legacy as one of the greatest modern-day Northern NSW Football teams.
“It’s the best week of the year when you make a grand final. The buzz that a grand final creates is contagious really,” Wilson said.
“Around training, everyone is laughing and smiling, but it’s serious as well, obviously.
“We’re going in confident. I think it’s already been a successful season with us winning the premiership and getting to the Australian Championship, but like I said at the start of the year, our goal is to do the double-double, and we’re one game away from that.
“Hopefully on Monday we can say we have done it.”
Wilson has played at Broadmeadow since he was a teenager and was part of the 2023 side that lost that year’s grand final 2-1 against the Jaffas.
They bounced back in style last year to beat Edgeworth Eagles in a penalty shootout, and they are looking forward to getting another crack at Lambton this Sunday.
“I think we probably might have just needed that one (the 2023 loss) to bring us along a bit. We were all still pretty young at that point,” Wilson said.
“The experience of losing one spurred us on a little bit and helped us last year.
“Lambton will be tough. Every game we play them, they’re tough. I think we’ve had the wood over them since that grand final in 2023, but in grand finals, anything can happen, and we know they are going to come out fighting.”
Despite having only played one game in a month while Lambton have played three knockout matches in the lead-up to the decider, Wilson agreed with his coach Jim Cresnar that the chance to rest was exactly what Magic needed following a gruelling year full of injuries.
Wilson said he was proud of his teammates for battling through so much adversity to get to the grand final.
Lining up in the centre of the Jaffas’ defence this weekend, determined to keep Magic from winning back-to-back championships, is one of the heroes of the 2023 grand final Riley McNaughton.
McNaughton is a club legend at Lambton. He has won three championships with the Jaffas including their maiden NPL title in 2014, was named the player of the final in 2023, was the club’s player of the year last year, and brought up 200 games as a Jaffa last month.
His football journey began in the under-6s for Lambton, and he is now determined to help guide the club to its fifth and his fourth NPL first grade championship this Sunday.
He commended the way his playing group had banded together following a less-than-ideal first half of the season, during which they struggled to score goals and many wrote them off as finals contenders.
“The way our group has come together over the last 10 weeks has been amazing,” McNaughton said.
“Everyone is putting in so much effort at training, and attendance at training has been so high.
“Everyone is really keen to walk away with something this year.
“A lot of people think we’ve overachieved, and I’m so proud of how far the boys have come this year.
“It’s been knockout every week for us since the finals started. We’ve had to win every game to get here, and we’ve done that in different ways each week.
“We’re really stoked to be here.
“I think we will go in as underdogs this week, and Magic deserve to be favourites because they’ve been amazing this year.
“It’s always fierce against Broadmeadow. Both clubs have been really successful over the past 10 years. It’s always great competition between us.
“Both teams are going to come out firing, and we’re going to have to be really solid to get the result.”
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