A spot in the grand final is up for grabs.
Pakenham will go head-to-head with minor premiers Warburton Millgrove in Saturday’s Outer East Division 1 preliminary final.
The Lions reached the prelim by clawing out a competitive win over Alexandra, while the Burras were rolled by Seville in the second semi-final.
“Warburton will learn a lot from it, they’ll be a lot better, it’s a real punch in the face,” Pakenham senior coach Justin Stanton said of Warburton Millgrove’s loss.
“They’ll certainly be a different list coming at us this week.”
The Lions were much stronger through the midfield on Sunday and their forward 50 entries were much more damaging.
Stanton’s side recorded 10 individual goalkickers, a DNA that has defined Pakenham’s success so far in 2025.
The Burras are a very good contested footy team with multiple damaging midfielders that can break through stoppages and win important hard balls.
“We both play a very similar style and that’s reflected in our previous two outings against each other,” Stanton said.
“They just open us up with their ball use and their run and their ability to have multiple options up forward.
“They comprehensibly beat us early in the year.
“We’ve both learnt a bit about one another, it’ll be interesting to see the pressures of the final, neutral ground.
“They’ll feel the pressure because they didn’t get the results they were looking for last year in their finals campaign.
“There’s always pressure on when you get the double chance, have the week off and you lose that first final.”
For the Lions, the positive mindset from last week will follow them into this week.
But it’s hard to ignore that a win this week brings the outfit to the last day of the season.
“We will embrace the week with the view that there’s a big prize for the lucky winner of this weekend, you get an opportunity to go into a grand final,” Stanton noted.
“We’ll throw everything at it this week and if we get a little bit of luck, we’ll keep a good account of ourselves.”
