We are now well and truly into the back end of the home and away season, with a handful of games left in the junior and senior female competitions, and 5 games left for the senior and reserve men.

In terrific news for the club, over the last few days we announced that we have re-signed our senior co-coaches, Devon Smith and Shayne Stone, to stay at the helm for 2024. It is a significant show of faith by both of them in the club and playing group. Congratulations and thanks to both of them.

On-field, the last few weeks have stretched our senior men’s squad due to injury, illness and unavailability, but our players have represented the club well against some very good sides. Last Saturday saw our seniors go down narrowly away to Grovedale. Dev proved his intuition and mystical insight, declaring in his address at 3Q time that the game would go down to the last kick. He wasn’t far off, with our boys hitting the lead with a few minutes left and Grovey then reclaiming it by 4 points shortly after,before the siren sounded with us about to kick inside our 50m arc.

This Saturday sees us host Bell Park at Bisinella Oval. We look forward to another entertaining game against a side who knocked us off when we visited them in May.

After circling the final four in recent weeks, our senior women have dropped their last two games, leaving them in 5th position. While still in the hunt, they face a tall order in their remaining two games to climb over 4th placed St. Mary’s. Good luck to them and we hope results go their way.

We have a number of junior sides in the finals hunt and expect several of them to see action after the remaining home and away matches.Good luck to all of them, and congratulations and thank you to all our junior sides on representing the club with distinction throughout the year.

In related news, AFL Barwon has awarded the LFNC the junior boys’ U16 and U14 grand finals for the weekend of 2nd and 3rd of September at Bisinella Oval. It will be a huge weekend and we can do with all the help available to run those days. We ask all parents who can volunteer to let your junior co-ordinators know over the next couple of weeks and we’ll be in touch.

Lastly, keep an eye out for vote count/presentation day information as we schedule them over the upcoming weeks.