If you had told Nathan Morris at the start of the season that his Weston Bears would be playing for the premiership with two games to go he wouldn’t have believed you.
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A win for the Bears on Sunday when they travel to Ulinga Oval to take on South Cardiff would mean the winner of their final day clash with Newcastle Jets Youth would be crowned premiers.
Weston is the form team of the competition having won their last three games against Edgeworth, Adamstown and Charlestown City to shoot into second place.
And 28-year-old Morris, who played his 200th first grade game with Weston earlier this season, said winning his third premiership in the top grade would be a special achievement.
“It would be massive if we win it,” he said.
“Obviously as a club we don’t recruit like the big teams like Broadmeadow and Lambton or the Jets.
“Realistically at the start of the year the goal for me was to make the top five.
“I’ll be honest, if someone had said at the start of the year we’d be playing for the premiership with two games left I’d say we’d have to have a really good run but some of the football we’ve played to get here I’m starting to think we really do deserve it.”
Weston trailed the Newcastle Jets 2-1 at half-time in their friendly on Wednesday night before the Bears made a host of changes at the break and eventually went down 8-1.
South Cardiff were also in action in midweek, losing on penalties to Victorian club South Springvale in the FFA Cup.
Weston coach Steve Piggott rested the majority of his first grade players in the second half and Morris said he expected a physical battle against the Gunners.
“It’ll be a high tempo, physical game,” he said.
“It’s always a tough battle against them, we had a really good run out against the Jets and we matched it with them in the first half.
“Piggo made a lot of changes at halftime so it didn’t take too much out of us, just the same amount as a normal training session which was good.”
South Cardiff upset Weston 1-0 when the teams met in round eight but Morris said the team had taken a lot from that game.
“Southy can beat anyone on their day,” he said.
“They’ve just beaten Lambton and Charlestown, we learned a big lesson from when we played them up here when they came and blitzed us.”
Piggott returns to Ulinga Oval for the first time since leaving the Gunners to take over at Weston.
Kick off is at 2.45pm.