READ MORE - LVFNL GRAND FINALIST - Mitiamo
A PREMIERSHIP drought of almost 70 years could be finally broken by 5pm on Saturday by the success-starved Pyramid Hill.
Not since 1950 in the long defunct Mitiamo District Football League have the Bulldogs won a senior premiership, but they get the chance on Saturday to make 2019 a year to savour when they play Mitiamo in the LVFNL grand final at Calivil.
A brilliant first half of the season laid the platform for the Bulldogs under new coach Adrian McErvale, who took over a side that had last year been knocked out in straight sets.
While much of the pre-season hype had centred around Mitiamo and Maiden Gully YCW, it was the Bulldogs who laid the challenge down to the rest of the competition, winning their first nine games by an average of 62 points.
It looked like they could have peaked when they lost three out of their five games between rounds 11 and 16, but they finished top of the ladder with a 13-3 record.
The Bulldogs bounced back from a second semi-final loss to Mitiamo by 22 points to defeat Bears Lagoon-Serpentine by 35 points off the back of a flying start in last week's preliminary final and book their first grand final since 2011.
The biggest improvement from the Bulldogs in 2018 to 2019 has been their capacity to hit the scoreboard this year.
They averaged just 72 points and kicked only one score above 100 last year; this season they have elevated their offensive output to 107 points per game and kicked eight 100-plus totals - despite losing key forward Nathan Fitzpatrick to a season-ending knee injury in round two.
However, the addition of competition leading goalkicker Braidy Dickens (68 goals) and Bailey George (33), who hurt a shoulder last week, have helped to keep the scoreboard ticking over.
The Bulldogs are the only side in the competition with six players to have kicked 20-plus goals - Dickens, George, Jack Woodward (29), Steven Gunther (23), Harding Medal runner-up Billy Micevski (23) and Jake Willcocks (22).
For all the talk about the Mitiamo forward line this year and Superoos' scoring power, it's the Bulldogs who are the competition's highest scoring team, averaging 107 points per game.
GRAND FINAL TEAM:
B: M. Bateman, B. Driscoll, D. Morison
HB: M. Klein-Breteler, D. Tonkin, A. Dobby
C: A. McErvale, S. Mann, B. Goodwin
HF: S. Gunther, L. O'Toole, B. George
F: J. Willcocks, B. Dickens, J. Sala
R: A. Holland, G. James, B. Micevski
Int: S. Mewett, J. Woodward, E. Dorrington, B. Dalton
In: B. Dalton, S. Mewett
Out: J. Hickmott, A. Murphy
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