Daylesford has lived to fight another day in the Central Highlands Football League premiership race.
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After missing out on finals last year, Daylesford was determined to return with a fast and furious style of football.
Trailing by three points at quarter time, the Bulldogs embraced the wet field conditions and outplayed Waubra to emerge victorious by 33 points at Bungaree on Saturday.
This stretches Daylesford’s winning run to seven games.
The Bulldogs’ season was teetering on the edge with them on just four wins after 10 rounds.
That record is now just a distant memory, having made the most of a favourable draw and with two wins over the Kangaroos in the sequence.
For Waubra, this sis the second year in a row it has gone straight out in an elimination final.
Daylesford coach Marcus Goonan said his playing group had the competitive edge to win against any team in the CHFL.
“I don’t know if we are a genuine premiership contender, but we certainly go into every encounter as an underdog.
“When we play good footy we can beat anyone.” Goonan said.
“We don’t have a lot of fear and I think that shows in the young guys we have. We backed our fitness and our run on a wet day like today.”
Goonan said that he was optimistic about an encounter against Gordon in a knockout semi-final next weekend.
“We go into that looking forward to it. We will learn things from the game and hopefully we come out as the winners.”
Seb Walsh returned to the side after recovering from a wrist injury and had an instant impact on the game by kicking an early goal.
The midfield pairing of Jordan Alexander and Michael Cummings were dominant as they won the majority of centre clearances, while Max Risstrom lead the scoring with three goals.
Waubra coach Grant Luscombe said that it was frustrating to lose during the first week of the play-offs in consecutive seasons.
“It’s totally disappointing. We need to change something and do something different because it’s obviously not working. To me it feels like we haven’t achieved anything this year.
“We were here to go deep into the finals. At the moment we just haven’t improved and it’s generally a pretty flat feeling.”
Luscombe admitted that he was forced to select an under-strength side after enduring a bruising campaign. “We probably had nine guys out today that had injuries who would normally be in our best team, but that’s not an excuse for the final result.”
Nick Dinsdale was the stand-out performer for the Roos, while Austin Murphy kicked two goals.