Twenty minutes after the third final siren of the afternoon, Leopold coach Garry Hocking was still trying to get his head around what had happened.
In the most dramatic of GFNL finals, the Lions survived a St Mary’s fightback that levelled the contest at the end of the fourth quarter and extra time to book a berth in the second semi-final with a golden point victory.
“What went on there?” Hocking mused on krockfootball.live.
“I’ve never been involved in a golden point. I haven’t been involved in too many draws or play five minutes at either end.
“So, it was pretty much new to me and to everybody else.
“But, sometimes, you just run with it.”
After Leopold extended its lead to 35 points early in the final quarter following a goal to Max Annadale, the contest started to follow a similar script to the Round 13 meeting between the two teams.
On that occasion, St Mary’s, after trailing by as much as 28 points in the third quarter and 20 points after an early Annandale goal in the last term, stormed home off the back of some Harry Benson and Sam Dobson brilliance to win by 11 points.
“We’ve learnt a lot through a couple of losses during the year, and particularly Round 13, where they got hold of us,” Hocking said.
“And it looked like they were going to get hold of us again.
“It was crazy – completely crazy.
“We’ll have to unpack it later on; I don’t know too much else about the game.”
This week, Hocking, known for his different themes, channelled fictional US college football coach turned English soccer manager Ted Lasso.
“Ted talks about his two buttons, and ones he never pushes – that’s the panic button and also the snooze button,” Hocking said.
“There was a little bit of a point where we did push the panic button, and that’s because St Mary’s are so good at winning (the) ball and putting enough heat on you, and then winning the contest.
“Once we won the ball through stoppage or contest, she was pretty hot.
“It’s a lot of quick kick, and you’ve just got to be lucky that you’ve got bodies or numbers in the right spot to try and win that ball and either go fast or go slow.
“Everything was chaos.”
Listen below to hear krockfootball.live’s call of the Golden Point period.
X: @krockfootball
