North Albany chase three-peat in women’s grand final, Spencer Park start hot favourites in men’s decider

Mt Barker captain Laura Archer is excited by the opportunity to lead her side to a maiden premiership in the Lower Great Southern Hockey Association women’s A-grade grand final on Saturday. A gritty 1-0 win over Spencer Park helped Mt Barker advance to the decider and they will face an in-form North Albany, who have only lost three times this season. “It’s something all of our team are really looking forward to and pushing for — we had a lot of intensity and a lot of passion last week,” Archer said. “We just really wanted to get to the grand final so I think that will carry through to this week. “There’s a big drive from Mt Barker to win their first grand final. “We have sort of had a very similar team for the last five years now so we’re all wanting it just as much as each other, so hopefully we can win it for ourselves and teammates.” The Redbacks will be hoping to win their third consecutive grand final against Mt Barker following their success in 2020 and 2021. They were 4-0 victors over Mt Barker in 2020 and brushed them aside in 2021 with a 5-2 win. Mt Barker haven’t beaten Redbacks this season but Archer expects having a fresh team on the day will pay dividends in the hopes of lifting the trophy and preventing their opposition from winning a three-peat. “We’ve never really had our full team every game this year so this week we’ll have our full team and we will all be pretty fresh,” Archer said. “Because we’ve got a lot of out-of-town players, most of them usually play two games in a day but we’ll have 13 or 14 fresh legs, which will probably be a big difference to what we’ve had all year. “We’ll look at some of their usual players, Michelle Ericsson, Lauren Spinks and the two Gallimores (Beck and Sarah).” In the men’s A-grade grand final, Spencer Park will look to win their second grand final in three years as they do battle with Manypeaks. Peaks will have to shake off their 3-1 loss to Park in the semifinal two weeks ago if they are to win back-to-back titles. Peaks’ Hayden Mills gave his side the lead in the semifinal, but goals to Brock Keymer, Darren Parkes and James Leiper got them straight into the decider. Mills was once again the stand-out for Peaks in their preliminary final, scoring two terrific goals to book a spot in the grand final. Park have only dropped points in two games all year, losing 4-1 in round 13 against Vikings and settling for a draw against Peaks in a thrilling 5-5 contest in round 12. The women’s A-grade grand final is set down for 2pm on Saturday, and the men’s A-grade decider will follow at 4pm.