Two Blues hunting two flags

“That was our line-in-the-sand moment. We didn’t lose again all year.”

Craige Milward walked into a coaching interview with Prahran in the middle of October 2023 not sure what to expect, but walked out buzzing at the prospect of becoming the Two Blues’ next senior coach.

The famous club, whose original roots stretch way back to 1886, had been in Division 1 for every season since 2013, bar one – 2017 – when they dropped to Division 2 but promptly won the flag to be immediately promoted.

2023 saw them make finals for the first time since returning to Div 1, only to be knocked out by UHS-VU in the 1^st Semi by 11 points. But Craige walked in the door at Toorak Park knowing he was inheriting a healthy foundation to build upon.

“Club management felt the team lacked structure,” said Craige. “Opposition teams tended to work us out pretty quickly. They felt that, with my VFL experience (as an Assistant Coach at Frankston), I could focus a little more on the opposition and add layers to our own strategy and game style.”

“We had a leadership meeting and the senior players were really impressive. I told them that I hadn’t come in to reinvent the wheel. But they said, ‘Nah, we want you to bring in a whole new wheel! We’re not VFL standard, but whatever you think we can deal with in terms of standards, expectations, terminology and gameplan.’

“It was so important for me to get that buy-in from the players. I could see they all did a heap of work away from the club. They just needed someone to help steer the ship a bit.”

Craige set about building the new framework and could quickly see the potential.

“I knew after Christmas that we had a few guys that really stood out,” he reflects. “We’ve got a bit of talent here.”

The Two Blues lost to Monash Blues (a Premier C team) by 4 points in a practice match and Milward walked away content that his new team was buying what he was selling.

The early rounds were a mixed bag, with four convincing wins tarnished by two disappointing losses – to Parkside by 27 points in Round 3, then a 65-point thumping at the hands of UHS-VU in Round 6, after conceding 11 goals to 3 in the second half.

“We sat 4-and-2 after that and I put hand up to take the blame for us getting overrun in that game,” Craige admitted.

“We got badly beaten that day by the team that had knocked us out of the finals last year and I think there was a bit of lingering anxiety from that. I heard a few excuses and felt we had low expectations of ourselves, so I gave them a spray at half-time and we got smashed in the second half!

“So we had a bit of a lock-in after the game and it proved to be a real turning point in our season. ‘Do we want to go through the motions or do we want to have a fair-dinkum crack? I’ll set the game plan, but you have to make it happen.’ A few of the quiet guys spoke up and said they were sick of being comfortable.

“Some home truths were spoken and we made a pact. Training numbers grew on the track. The numbers and energy at our social events were outstanding.

“That was our line-in-the-sand moment. We didn’t lose again all year.”

Craige was finding it challenging to coach against all these unfamiliar VAFA teams the first time around.

“I had no idea of the opposition each week, so I started sneaking out to their training sessions to fast-track my learning.

“The mechanisms we implemented were based on our entire team being really strong on ‘defence first’ then attacking from that. It grabbed the imagination of our blokes, who could see unfolding and started to believe in it. We strangled sides by denying them time and space, then controlled the footy ourselves.”

Milward’s team conceded 16 goals in that Round 6 loss to UHS-VU. They wouldn’t concede more than 9 in a game for the rest of the season as they peeled off 12 straight wins (including a 28-point win over UHS-VU in their Round 13 clash) to finish 3 games clear on top of the ladder with a 16-2 record.

A ten-goal win over Parkside in the Second Semi Final then handed the Two Blues a direct route to their first senior Grand Final in 7 years. The Devils then sneaked past UHS-VU in a tense Preliminary Final to set up a rematch in the decider.

“It was super exciting,” Craige recalls with a smile.

“I was feeling relaxed and confident on the journey there in the car with my son Max, who played in the team. We’d never been in a Grand Final together, so that was really special in itself. We got to the ground and saw the excitement in the boys’ faces. They prepared well and I just stood back and watched for a couple of minutes – they were all zoned in.”

The Two Blues entered as short-priced favourites, given their complete dominance across the back half of the season.

“My message to them was that this is an opportunity. ‘All we’ve done to this point is put ourselves in a position to play in a Grand Final. But plenty of teams who are expected to win don’t.’

The weather was wild and wintry at Martin Reserve in Hadfield.

“Those conditions evened things up a bit as it diminished the strength of our talls. We’d had a couple of dominant big strong forwards in Matt Clifford and Shaun Chapman, but we knew this was going to be a slug-fest. There were certainly some nerves going in. There’d be something wrong with you otherwise!”

Sure enough, it turned out to be a hard-fought, low-scoring scrap, but Prahran’s watertight defence stood up once again, holding Parkside goal-less until midway through the third term. However, the Two Blues had only kicked 3 goals themselves, so the game remained in the balance at three-quarter time, with the minor premiers holding an 8-point lead.

“I had to take a deep breath and calm my nerves,” Craige recalls as he travels back to the moment.

“I wanted to deliver clear messaging and leave it up to the boys to get it done.”

And get it done they did. It took an agonisingly tense 20 minutes for the first goal of the final term to be kicked and it went to League Best & Fairest winner Shaun Chapman, who gave Prahran a precious 13-point buffer.

Mitch Lawson responded for Parkside 90 seconds later to tighten things up once again, before Jesse Waters slotted  the sealer from the boundary line at the 27-minute mark to hand the Two Blues their first Division 1 premiership. It was their 14^th straight win, with an impressive average margin of 47 points.

“That final siren was amazing,” said Craige.

“To have my son playing and for us to have family and friends there to share that moment with. All those people who have helped us along the way.”

“I didn’t realise at the time what it meant to the club. It started to hit me a few nights later and then on Presentation Night when I looked around the room and saw the excitement on people’s faces. Not only the players who played, it was the other players, the medical staff, the trainers, the Board members – the entire collective group.

“The club has an annual lunch – the Jack Morgan Lunch – and the old premiership players get along and catch up. I made sure our 2024 boys understood that. You’ll have this connection here forever. You’ll always be welcomed back as a premiership player.

“Winning the flag is an instantaneous celebration for the players, but there’s more longevity in the celebrations for the club. Every club reflects back on its past flags, whereas the players tend to be focused in the now, as they should be.”

Twelve months on from that initial meeting with the Prahran Board and Craige couldn’t be more pleased with how it has panned out.

“This is probably the best club I’ve been at, to be honest. No disrespect to my other clubs, but I’ve never been to a club with so many good people. At our very first selection dinner on the Wednesday night before Round 1, I looked around and noticed that the 20-year-olds were sitting with the 27-year-olds. The veterans were mixed in with the kids. There were no cliques or groups. They’re all mates.

“That’s easy to say but so many footy clubs naturally have the older blokes hanging out together while the youngsters stick together. But these guys just mix in as one big group. They’re a great honest bunch who keep me accountable. From the President down to the blokes who tirelessly sweep the rooms out, they are all good, cracking blokes.”

The Two Blues now face the challenge of playing Premier football for the first time, stepping up from the Divisions to Premier C in 2025.

“We’ve lost a few players to retirement – defender Luke Kerr and forward Matt Clifford. Hopefully Matt gets the taste again when the whips are cracking and comes back for a few games! Joey Bell is heading back to Bendigo. But other than that, we’ll have our full flag side plus 7 or 8 other senior players from 2024.

“Plus we’ll have some recruits, with Patrick Marks probably the biggest of them. He captained Mansfield and has been an Interleague rep up there as well as spending some time with Collingwood VFL. He’s already standing out with his movement and presence as an inside mid.”

Having tasted success in 2024, Prahran won’t take a backward step in 2025.

“We’re not there to make up the numbers,” says Craige sternly. “We want to challenge.”

“I’m not 100% across where we sit yet, so we’re aiming to be really competitive and around at the pointy end of the season. We’ll work on utilising our strengths and also on strengthening our weaknesses. We’ve identified a couple of areas we can get stronger in.

“We want to take it up to the opposition and we can do that with our gameplan and strategy, which I don’t have to re-teach. We can build on it this summer and be a little more opposition-specific in 2025. We want to become more adaptable – we had a relatively generic defence this year, for example.

“We had a great spread of goalscorers up forward this year and that excitement will continue. We’ll shift a few players around to add some value in other areas as well. Plus we’ve got good internal development in the group with fringe players already stepping up, fitter and committed on top of what we already had.

“My role is to make it fun, bring some passion and add another 30% of VFL smarts. If we’re in it together, pointing in the right direction and working hard, the results tend to take care of themselves.

“We’re going into Premier C to put our best foot forward and try to win it.”