A POW-WOW which involved some smart-thinking powered Warrnambool District Hockey Association to its first-ever veterans' Victorian country championship yesterday.
The side - which made its titles debut - clashed against a strong Geelong outfit in a pressure-filled final at Footscray.
Victorious co-coach Paul Wastell explained Warrnambool was on the back foot in the first half.
"They had a lot of shots but just couldn't quite get one," he said. "Our goalie (Brian Cowie) basically saved the day for us.
"In the second half we came back a bit.
"We started to attack but we found it hard to get clean shots."
After the 25-minute halves, neither side had scored. The teams were forced to play five-minute halves, with no successful shots fired in the extra periods.
It came down to a rare penalty shoot-out.
"We had a minute to decide which five players would take the penalty strokes," Wastell said. Chris Wood, co-coach Tony Frost, Grant Smith, Wastell and Chris Radcliffe were assigned the task.
Wood went first and converted while the first Geelong player to fire was unsuccessful.
Both sides scored the remaining four shots, effectively seeing Warrnambool triumph 5-4, an exceptional achievement for a smaller association.
"We went there thinking we had a pretty good team but you never know what sort of teams the other associations have," Wastell said.
"There were a lot of ex-State League players."
The co-coach also explained the Geelong side played together every week in a veterans' competition in Melbourne - a luxury Warrnambool doesn't have.
"We agreed that we'd train every Sunday morning for about four or five weeks leading up to (the titles)," he said.
The extra training paid off as the side went through the championship undefeated.
It drew 2-2 with South West - a mixture of Portland, Mt Gambier and Hamilton players who were keen to knock off their neighbouring association - in its opening match and then went on to defeat East Gippsland 2-1.
It defeated Albury-Wodonga 2-0 to see it finish the minor round on top of its section.
It took on Central Victoria, which finished fourth in the other pool, in the crossover match, winning 3-0 to advance to the final.
The women's side progressed to the A reserve grand final but succumbed to Albury-Wodonga after a penalty shoot-out.
"It's a horrible way to end such a good game but that's the game," said coach Lyn Lanman, who was impressed with her side despite the loss.
"We were beaten by Albury 4-1 in our first game and then we took it to them (in the final).
"It was very tight, very close and very quick.
"We changed our game quite considerably by going to a man-on-man defence so they couldn't get their running and passing game on quite as quickly."
Scores were locked at 1-1 after full-time, with neither side scoring in time-on. Albury-Wodonga won the shoot-out 5-2.
Warrnambool also made it to the division two men's final but went down to Ballarat 6-3 while the division three men's team finished third.
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