CSU have the opportunity to end their Bathurst District Football men’s first grade season on the highest note possible in Sunday’s grand final against Lithgow Workmans Club at Proctor Park.
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If CSU win it will help heal the pain from a disappointing run of recent results in the competition.
“In my time here since 2013 we’ve been in three grand finals and lost all of them,” CSU coach Mitch Kunnen said.
“It’s been over 25 years since CSU has won the local men’s first grade competition.”
Now the students get a great chance to change all that against a Lithgow team they’ve enjoyed success against this season.
The problem is that CSU will be somewhat soccer starved compared to their opponents.
Rain got in the way of the students’ major semi-final against Panorama FC but thanks to CSU’s finish as minor premiers they were granted a pass through to the grand final.
However, that means the team have gone three weeks without any match time.
Kunnen said his side have to be alert and ready to go from the first minute against a Workmans outfit fresh off a confidence-building win.
“The season has been very weather affected. We’ve ended up playing a lot of our matches in blocks. When we had those long periods without playing we drew and lost some games,” he said.
“We’ve got to learn from those mistakes. Playing Lithgow is always going to be a difficult task.”
CSU have displayed one of the more clinical approaches to the game in first grade and Kunnen puts that down to an excellent workrate through the midfield.
“We’ve been very strong through the middle. John Henry and Talon Myers have been outstanding for us in the middle of the park,” he said.
“They’ve been great at controlling the flow of the game. If they have a strong game then there’s a better chance we win.
“We want to continue playing out from the back, into the midfield then out wide up front for guys like Jimmy [Shaw] to run onto it.”
Kunnen believes his team know how to approach a match against Lithgow with confidence.
“We’ve had two wins and a draw against Lithgow this season,” he said.
“Lithgow are quite a physical team so you’ve got to match it with them otherwise they will run you over, but we don’t want to get too caught up in that and we just have to focus on our own game.”
Match start is 3pm Sunday on Proctor Park field one.
Lithgow also play in the in the men’s second grade final, taking on Cowra Eagles.