Cobden's Christian Koroneos is champing at the bit to play Koroit. The defender, who runs out for his 100th senior appearance for Cobden in Saturday's match against the Saints, believes his group can give its rivals a run for their money.
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"We're keen to play them, we haven't beaten them in nearly eight years I reckon," Koroneos said. "It'll be good to take them on while we're a young, quicker side than we have been in the past. Obviously they are a lot more experienced than us, but hopefully we can run over the top of them."
Moving from Melbourne to Cobden when he was 12, Koroneos, now 24, has played every season since at the Bombers. A stint at Port Douglas in the AFL Cairns league in 2020 was only made possible when there was no football on the fixture in Victoria that year.
The experience was worth its weight in gold though, Koroneos a part of the Crocs' premiership team that year.
"We didn't lose a game all year," he said. "It was a good experience, playing on different players, different sort of footy as well. Since I've come back, I'm probably the most experienced down back so I've sort of implemented those different set ups in the backline for the young blokes to learn."
A concreter by trade, Koroneos is excited to play his first big milestone match in the red sash and enjoys the mateship that being a part of the club provides.
"It's a close club, you don't usually get too many new players in so it's one tight group of mates," he said. "We all do stuff together during the week, like going to the gym or extra sessions in the week off."
Koroneos isn't keeping a ceiling on what the team can achieve this season under the tutelage of new coach Dan Casey.
"At the start of the year everyone expected us to be bottom of the ladder and not win a game, but we had a fairly big pre-season," he said. "(Two recent wins) everyone seems a lot more enthused, even at training everyone is up and about. We can definitely get to finals, we played South and only lost by seven-eight goals, a team who is undefeated. The next month will be hard for us but we'll see where we're at after that."