AFTER four long seasons of building a team to execute a gameplan and put faith in the youth development, Woodville-West Torrens is just one win away from a fairytale finish. Much like two years earlier when Central District’s first ever finals series yielded a flag, the Eagles are on track to repeat that feat, but not without an incredibly hard slog to lead up to the moment on Sunday.

“It was always my plan to build the processes of football with the squad,” Eagles coach Narelle Smith said today. “It’s always been a contest defence type focus for my first two to three years and then really overlay that with offensive principles and structures and technical and tactical type implementation.

“They’ve really taken to that really, really well. Add the injection of youth which we certainly as a club made that a priority when I started full-time in February in last year has really been great.”

For such an achievement, Smith said she was just trying to “keep it as stock standard as we always do” heading into the big day. She admitted the coaching staff had let the player celebrate the moments, particularly the second semi-final win, and then once the dust had settled on those celebrations, brought them back to the job at hand.

Woodville-West Torrens’ youth have been at the forefront of the Eagles’ success, overcoming the loss of co-skipper Poppy Waterford in Round 6 and then Christina Leuzzi getting drafted to the Adelaide Crows following Round 11. Instead of impact the way the side played, Maia Freemantle and Julia Faulkner took the opportunity left by Waterford around the ball, while country footballer Alice Tentye has been a revelation coming into the side late in the year.

“I think they’ve (Freemantle and Faulkner) grabbed (those midfield minutes) with a lot of veracity and really showed us what they can do in and around the footy.,” Smith said. “The last part of the season we just stumbled against South with not starting well, and then we didn’t have all those kids for Round 13 against Sturt and that showed us how much we rely on those kids. It was an opportunity for them to get in and around the footy and really show us what they can do.

“I hadn’t been able to get Alice Tentye into the squad until Round 10 and she’s just come in and blown us all away as a 19-year-old coming from the South East that has just played country footy. She’s just showed us that she’s really at the level, so really lucky in that space.”

While being without Leuzzi for the past month, the Eagles star will return back to the her SANFLW club on Sunday having been ticked off from the Crows to play in the big dance. Smith said there were “lots of conversations” had, first getting approval from the SANFL within the SANFLW regulations, then ensuring Leuzzi was both able and willing to play, before going to the Crows for the final approval.

Smith was named Coach of the Year at Monday night’s SANFLW Awards night, and lead a stack of Eagles who made the Team of the Year including Freemantle, Lucy Moore and Imogen Trengove who she highlighted as key reasons for the rise up the ladder.

“It’s not something that I personally chase or I don’t think our girls personally chase,” Smith said. “It’s just a bi-product of a lot of hard work and it’s a really nice acknowledgement for the program in particular with regard to how far its developed in the four years that I’ve been here and we’re really happy with how we’ve created some pathways between our local clubs and identifying talent and making sure we had access to that talent and help them to be the best.

“The fact that Freemantle, Moore, Trengove were all in that Team of the Year for SANFLW was a real reflection that we’re heading in the right direction as a club and as a program.”

A cumulative difference of 13 points across three games has separated the Eagles from South Adelaide this season, with Smith’s side leading the head-to-head 2-1 both of which came in the past month and marked the first time they had toppled South Adelaide. While clearly giving them the most pressure all season, Smith said she “loved” playing the Panthers.

“They’re the games that you really want to play,” she said. “I remember one of my senior players earlier in the year her housemate said ‘are you guys scared of playing South in Round 9?’ and we were like ‘absolutely not, we embrace that, we want to play the best side’.

“In the end I think it’s pretty clear that South and us have been the best sides all year so we just can’t to actually get out there and battle it out and no matter which way the result goes, we’ll hold our head high and know that we’ve been up in the top echelon of SANFLW which is off the back of a lot of hard work and just really proud of the playing group and how they’ve attacked the year.”

As for the key to victory, Smith said South Adelaide was “very, very good” at taking away the opposition’s strengths and have long been terrific defensively. However the Eagles mentor said it was the offensive element in the Panthers’ game that had gone to another level in 2025.

“For me, watching South over the whole of SANFLW since its inception, they sometimes could have been criticised for not being offensive enough, but I think they’ve taken their offence to the next level,” Smith said. “It will be a real good combination of being able to attack with our offensive prowess but also being able to stop them and having really good defensive running patterns.

“I think it’s going to be an absolute cracker to be honest.”