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Triumphant Bendigo inter-league coach Darryl Wilson believes this crop of players has the opportunity to achieve something special.
The 99-point thumping of Outer East on Saturday lifted Bendigo to eighth place on the AFL Victoria Community Championshpis rankings.
While elated with the win, Wilson said the victory was only the beginning of a journey for the Bendigo squad.
"If we get the same commitment next year we'll have a very good side again and you'd be confident to take on any opponent,'' Wilson said.
"We want a crack at someone like the Goulburn Valley. We're sick to death of being told we're not a great league.
"We're a major league and we want to go up the rankings.
"It only makes for a better league if our ranking is higher and I don't think our league is held in the regard it should be.
"Hopefully, some inter-league success can improve that mentality."
Bendigo was in a different class to Outer East.
The home side's ball movement and two-way running was superb, particulalry in the first-half where they set up the big win.
"The boys were super from the first training session,'' Wilson said,
"We set up a way we wanted to play and the boys executed the game plan perfectly.
"Maybe the only little thing we did wrong was overuse the ball a bit by hand.
"We probably needed to get the ball in a bit quicker, but you couldn't ask for much more in a performance like that.
"We didn't know much about our opponent because they're a new league and, they were a good side at times, but I think it was more about how well the Bendigo boys played.
"After the game we had to name our best six players and that was mighty tough.
"We had to leave some really good players out of our best six."
The official best six players for Bendigo were Jake Thrum, Jack Geary, Nathan Horbury, Bryce Curnow, Liam Barrett and Patty McKenna - which was hard to argue with.
You could mount a strong case that Adam Baird, Jack Scanlon and Matt Goodyear were in the best six to eight players on the ground as well, while defenders Josh Govan, Jake Pallpratt and Harrison Huntley didn't put a foot wrong all day either.
"We got contributions across the board and everyone shared the load,'' Wilson said.
"Our backline was super. Geary, Thrum and Barrett were terrific.
"I thought Matt Goodyear's game was unheralded.
"Horbury was super, Govan's second-half was good, Baird was sensational early and Scanlon was electric in the forward line.
"Even the two ruckmen Callum Crisp and Harry Crone were good. They weren't dominant by any stretch, but they gave us first use of the ball at times."
Going forward, the strength of the Bendigo squad will come from the talented group of 19-23-year-old's in the league at the moment.
"We had the futures players involved in the training squad and we hope that gave them a taste of inter-league footy,'' Wilson said.
"We picked one (Bailey Henderson) to play and Gisborne's Brad Bernacki was close to selection as well.
"We want players in the league to want to play inter-league footy instead of us forcing them to play.
"We left two really good players (South Bendigo's Kaiden Antonowicz and Kangaroo Flat's Jono Lanyon) out of the final team and that was a tough decision, but those decisions have to be made when you get really good buy-in from the playing group.
"That was a really good team performance today and we hope that players see that and they want to be part of this in the future."
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