The Ballarat Football Netball League senior netball competitions have seen the curtains drawn shut on a roller coaster year.
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It's a decision that clubs agree is the right call to make in the state's current COVID-19 landscape.
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Still, it is one that leaves all involved feeling unfulfilled, as the hard work, sacrifice and commitment will be left unrewarded.
For North Ballarat coach Annie McCartin, who led her side to the A Grade minor premiership, abandoning finals ensured fairness across the competition.
"I know there was talk of dropping (teams) out of the (top six) ... but how disappointing for those teams that would miss out," she said.
"I feel that to be fair on everyone, everyone's put a lot of time in ... players have given everything ... I do believe they had to make this decision."
For most clubs, netball trials began in February.
Over two months of preparation for round one followed, one of the most anticipated starts to a BFNL season ever.
Three separate lockdowns forced the season to dwindle down to 11 rounds, each side playing each other once.
The BFNL then watched as lockdown pushed the finals start date further back with each passing week, to the point of no return.
"I feel we have to make sure that we acknowledge and address the time and effort that these players ... put in and how well they did," McCartin said.
While the end result of no premierships being awarded follows what happened in 2020, this year seems to hit harder.
With all the challenging aspects of the season that were endured, a result would have been fitting for each grade.
"We all would have just loved to play something just to be able to say 'this is the reward ... all your hard work, all your time, all your persistence ... there's going to be an outcome," McCartin said.
East Point had A through to E Grade in the finals and like everyone else, was shattered not to have the chance to win premierships.
"It has been our most successful year as long as I've been around," club netball coordinator Maddie Moran said.
"In the end we have our minor premierships ... it's pretty hard, it's not really the same, we play for finals, that's what it all comes down to."
Moran added that the motivation of players and coaches were affected the more the season was impacted by lockdowns.
"Our biggest worry now is going onto next year, will those players now return ... you want to hope that next season's going to be normal but we all thought this season was going to be quite normal," she said.
"A few girls have said how it just wasn't the same this year, they lost motivation because we didn't know if there was going to be an end of the season or finals or anything.
"For our club, we got unlucky we missed pretty well every function we had on, so the club took a hard hit in that way.
"You play your sport for social (reasons) too, so I think not having that social side really affected everyone too."
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