Despite experiencing polar-opposite emotions, both Hillwood's Nathan Lowe and Bridgenorth's Brady Demeijer could agree on one thing.
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Saturday's grand final tussle between their sides was bigger than just football.
Played out in front of a bumper crowd at Windsor Park, Bridgenorth were gunning for a clean-sweep of finals, while Hillwood's first flag since Cathy Freeman won gold was in its sights, with the latter emulating the 400-metre feat.
"You see the crowd here today, the blue and maroon, we've worked a lot time for this," Lowe said.
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"For me personally, I've been here since 2017 and just the hard work that's gone into getting to where we've got to - today is reward for effort."
Trailing by just one point at half-time, Lowe expected the tight-knit footy that ensued.
"We knew when we came in at half-time that we didn't expect to be in front by a mile or behind by a mile.
"We just knew at three-quarter time we had one quarter to go with the breeze and we relied on that. To our credit, the boys just kept piling in our forward line in the last quarter and we got some reward from it."
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Taking on the motto of 'whatever it takes' after playing three sudden-death clashes, Lowe could sense this was special.
"I was thinking how I could inspire the guys and we brought in these sticky notes I gave to every player the last three weeks before the game with individual notes on them.
"Some of them played with them in their socks and some stuck them on their hooks and they all kept them.
"We stuck by the motto whatever it takes. We're here, we're not going away and we'll do what it takes to stand here with these around our necks right now."
On the other side of the coin, a more somber feeling emerged from the Bridgenorth rooms but it wasn't all doom and gloom following the season's end.
"Obviously it's very disappointing not to come away with the win but we will get around our under-18s and reserves," Demeijer said.
"They won their flags and the club is bigger than the seniors side so we'll make sure we have a fun weekend."
Despite holding the lead at all three breaks before the final siren, Bridgenorth's leader wasn't pleased.
"We only really played our proper brand of footy for a number of minutes in certain quarters.
"We were too scared to lose the game than trying to win it. The nerves probably got to us a little bit and to their credit, they played the better brand of footy."
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