Merrivale prevails in blockbuster elimination final against Russells Creek in the Warrnambool and District league

Finals football is about absorbing everything which comes with the occasion - shelving all that's happened during the regular season and remaining focused on the task at hand.

Through four quarters of sustained pressure in a highly contested, at times ferocious Warrnambool and District elimination final against Russells Creek, the Tigers live to fight another day after running away with the contest in the final term, 11.7 (73) to 7.7 (49).

Little separated the two sides for the majority of the afternoon at Davidson Oval but the Tigers had just enough class and composure to make the most of their chances in attack.

Most importantly, the Tigers reaffirmed that they still have another few chapters left in their 2022 story.

Leading by just five points at three quarter-time, the Tigers found their spark with crafty goal-kicker Jack Neave curling a beauty to start the final term, with Sobey's group then piling on four more goals to advance to the semi-final.

Sobey told The Standard it was a mature performance from his side and an important moment in the club's journey.

"It's been a while since we've played finals and there was around 10 or 11 who were playing their first Merrivale final so there's been a lot of education about how it looks like," he said.

"You're not going to blow teams out of the water early in games, so we knew it would take a four-quarter effort to get there and especially here at Davidson, it's quite a difficult ground to play at times so we knew if we hung around in the third we'd give ourselves a chance.

"We talk a lot of defence and what that looks like, we knew if we stuck to that we'd be all right and I thought our team defence was great."

In crucial periods, it was big man Manny Sandow who proved the difference, clunking big marks, kicking goals and providing a constant outlet for the Tigers.

The lionhearted ruckman kicked the sealer with a cool set-shot from the pocket to send the crowd into full voice.

It was a sublime performance from a player highly admired across the competition.

"He's a Merrivale man and he loves pulling on the jumper and we know no matter what he's going through he'll give you 110 per cent - he's the assistant coach of this club and we can see him leading this club going forward," Sobey said.

Neave slotted two and looked threatening whenever he went near it, skipper Jack Gleeson was enormous and Troy McLaughlin was a standout.

After the shock loss to South Rovers in the final round, sending the Tigers into the elimination final, Sobey said he was proud of the way the group responded throughout the week.

"We were all pretty flat after the game but the message was pretty clear, we didn't have time to sook about it," he said.

"We made sure we got things off our chest on the Saturday but we responded in the way we thought we could."

It sets up an intriguing clash against Kolora-Noorat on Sunday at Allansford Recreation Reserve, with Sobey believing his group was up for the challenge against the Power who are coming off a loss to Panmure..

"We played them early on in the season, they look a lot different, we watched them (Saturday), they're a quality outfit but we'll back ourselves in," he said.

"It's going to be a pretty big game."

There was plenty to hold its head high about for Russells Creek, which continued to stay in the contest all day with Blake Rudland-Castles finding plenty of the ball, Sam Grinter was dangerous up forward and Daniel Nicholson kept running all day to provide some spark.

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can access our trusted content:

Now just one tap with our new app: Digital subscribers now have the convenience of faster news, right at your fingertips with The Standard: