PAKENHAM: 11th (5-13)
Percentage: 76.8
Points scored per game: 61
Points conceded per game: 79.4
Best win: R16 v Olinda Ferny Creek
Worst loss: R14 v Emerald
Leading goal kicker: Sam Kors (22)
Best players: Rhys Clacy, Jordan Stewart, James Harrison, Jake Thompson, Joel Sarlo.
Preseason prediction: 3rd
Grade: F
Pakenham’s season promised plenty and ended in disaster.
Mercy of a quirk in the competition’s by-laws, the Lions have suffered the indignation of being relegated to the competition’s second division to play its football in 2025.
But how did it get here?
Coming off a 2023 season that saw them within a few kicks of a preliminary final, plenty expected Pakenham to give the premiership race a shake under new coach Paul Carbis.
Instead, it was anything but.
They took the game right to Narre Warren in a promising contest in round one but unfortunately, outside of a Sam Kors goal after the siren against Monbulk in round five, that performance was effectively as good as the season got.
Jake Barclay suffered a season-ending knee injury early in the piece and with his absence came a lack of leadership and series of poor performances on the field.
Concerns about being able to defend, particularly in open spaces, arose early in the year and never dissipated, with the onset of winter plunging the senior side further into calamity.
Unable to process rain and wet conditions were major contributors to seven-game losing streak, and wretched performance at home against Emerald would ultimately become Carbis’ last in his role, handing in his resignation amid tension behind the scenes at Toomuc Reserve.
Pakenham kicked five goals to two in the opening term for an 18-point lead at quarter time, but when once the rain set in after the opening break, they kicked a further four goals for the remainder of the afternoon to Emerald’s 13, as the Bombers ran away with a 34-point win in round 14.
Needing results to break its way on the final day of the season, they simply did not, and the inability to beat the sides around their standard ultimately proved their undoing.
The aforementioned Emerald game and home, coming only weeks removed from a similar afternoon against Gembrook Cockatoo up the hill, when they were held to just four goals for the afternoon, personified a lack of fight and a rigid inflexibility that failed to adjust to the conditions at hand.
Too often they stuck to their possession-based philosophy and overused the ball in the back half, becoming predictable to their opposition and easy to restrict.
Bailey Stiles, Jai Rout and Tom Gamble, earmarked to play key position roles forward of the ball, all battled fitness issues throughout the year and Jordan Stewart was often deployed behind the ball out of necessity, resulting in a lack of height in the forward 50 and ultimately seeing Sam Kors assume the key forward role.
In the middle, they lacked polish while down back the defensive identity that Ash Green had instilled, which at a base level ensured they were simply hard to play against, vanished.
The Lions need size, midfield grunt and above all, leadership, both on and off the field.
Trips to Alexandra, Yea and Healesville will be tough for any prospective coach to swallow in weighing up his options, but confidence can be taken from the fact that many of the side that reached the semi finals in 2023 remained at the club in 2024, and finals runs in both the Under 19s and reserves a bright future in years to come, should they take the relegation as a chance to rally together.
