IRYMPLE captain Mark Thomson led from the front with a magnificent century that guided his team to their third Sunraysia Cricket Association First Division premiership.
The all-rounder carved out a career-best 129 and took 2/20 in a man of the match performance as the Swallows put together a superb team effort to defeat Mildura East by 229 runs at Henshilwood Oval.
Irymple coach Bryson Lush lauded what was close to the perfect game from his side, with the 311-run target set always likely to put the visitors on the back foot.
Thomson’s fourth triple-figure score of the season came from 154 deliveries with 10 fours and four sixes, Lush recorded his highest score of the season with 72, his fourth half-century, and a quick-fire 30 not out for Jarrad Armsden and a patient 25 from David Filippi helped the Swallows to 8/310.
The four-pronged pace attack of Chase Stone (4/14), Billy Phelan (3/29), Thomson and Dom Price (1/16) then put the clamps on the East batting order to dismiss them 81.
“It was pretty close to the perfect game,” Lush said post-game. “We knew winning the toss was going to be big, the pitch was a belter.
“I think we’ve been flirting with a performance like this with the bat for couple of years now, so for it to click in a grand final you couldn’t ask for more as coach.
“This is my fourth year here now and the goal was always to win a flag. We’ve come close in years gone by and got done by Golly in the grand final last year so to come out on top today means the world.
“Mark was phenomenal to get us off to a great start but we had contributors all the way through. Riley Payne did his job, ‘Flip’ got us to 2/166, helped set us a platform to hit the switch.
“Especially with our bowling line-up we defend really well on this deck and we did the work today.”
East showed their mettle this season after last week’s outstanding semi-final win over Gol Gol, taking their place in the grand final after four seasons of finishing inside the bottom two.
Nick Dorman (3/77) and Tom Vadlja (3/78) were the best of their bowlers, before Vadlja backed up to score 23 during the largest grand final run chase in well over a decade.
Lush said Thomson was a deserved man of the match, capping off what was a “phenomenal season”.
“He’s been on another level, he was amazing last year winning the Innes Medal but his batting has gone to a completely different level,” he said.
“I don’t think you’ll see a better ton in a grand final than what you saw from Mark. Anytime your opening bat can knock off 129 in a grand final it’s going to put you in good stead.
“It really set up our middle order to kick on.
“Then with the ball, Mark has been nursing a side strain and hasn’t bowled a lot in the past 10 weeks or so, but he was brilliant to tie it up from an end and let Billy do his thing from the other end before Dom and Chase came on and bowled really well.
“We showed a lot of energy in the field and we were able to create chances from that.”
Lush is hopefully there is more to come from this playing group.
“If you look through it’s a relatively young list,” he said.
“You’ve got some experienced guys like ‘Jacko’ (Armsden) and ‘JP’ (Jordan Payne) but you need those around the group as well.”
The victory capped a brilliant weekend for the club who also won the third and fourth division flags.
Gol Gol, meanwhile, were victorious in the second division grand final.
