South Armidale ensured they won’t finish the Northern Inland Premier League season winless after landing their first victory of the season on Saturday.
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The win came just in time too with Saturday’s fixtures the final round of the regular season.
The Scorpions downed cross-town rivals Norths United and doubled their goal tally for the season in the 5-1 win.
President Joe Campbell said it was a deserved triumph after a year of improvement for the young side.
“It felt like a grand final to be honest,” he said.
“The last two months we have playing pretty good football but we just haven't had any luck.”
While the season is over for Souths, Campbell said it was “encouraging” to get the win.
“At the beginning of the season we knew we were going to struggle but all we were looking for was improvement and to give these young guys somewhere to play and somewhere to learn and hopefully keep them around for the following years,” he said.
“If we didn't have premier league teams we wouldn't have had those uni blokes who wanted to play premier league, they would have gone somewhere else and our young blokes would be struggling playing in a local comp and we wouldn't have had numbers to fill teams so it was a very big positive.”
The club are looking forward to 2019 with the a large number of the playing group planning on sticking around.
“The majority of them want to be there next year and I have only heard of one that is leaving town,” Campbell said.
“Put a few other decent players in among that which we are hoping we get two or three players back that have played with us before so put them in with the ones we have got we are going to be competitive next year.”
As for the rest of the competition, Campbell has tipped an East Armidale and Tamworth FC grand final.
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“FC deserve to be favourites but on their day, Easts could knock them,” he said.
“I can only judge the games against us but on their day Easts can play some really good football.
“They have proved that everytime they have played us.
“They are the only team that has ripped us apart in all three games.
“FC deserve to be favourites and it will be a close final.
“I daresay it will be between those two.”