Flag Feature: The Saints came marching in (Part 2)

St Mary’s Salesian has been Terry Burt’s second home all his life. His Dad, Bruce, played more than 350 games for the club and is a Life Member. Terry duly followed in his father’s footsteps, playing 250 games and earning his own Life Membership in 2017.

Then he ‘moved out of home’ in a footballing sense, embarking on a successful coaching career in Bendigo with Golden Square, Newbridge and the Bendigo Thunder.

But when St Mary’s Salesian were in the market for a new women’s senior coach in 2025, the pull of home hit Terry.

“I’ve always had an emotional connection to the club, with me and Dad,” said Terry.

“I’ve always loved the place, and somewhere I wanted to finish my coaching career. I’d spoken to the club about coming back on a couple of occasions, but the club was nervous about me commuting from Bendigo for such a big role.

“In the end, we all took a gamble. I didn’t know how I’d go with the travel, because a 4-hour round trip twice a week, plus gamedays, is a huge commitment.”

Terry’s lifelong passion for the Saints ultimately won out, and he returned to the fold to lead their women’s program, with high hopes of returning it to the glory of the back-to-back flags of 2017-18.

But it was also about far more than just football.

“For me, it was also about getting Dad back involved at the club. My parents have always been my biggest supporters. Plus, I wanted to get other former players back. We all play football as young people, but we don’t fully appreciate the entirety of what it means until we’re older.

“Returning to the club meant that a lot of players I played with have shown a keen interest in what I’m doing and have reconnected with the club as a result.”

Having finished sixth in Division 4 with a 6-9 record in 2024, Terry knew his team had plenty of work to do as they rose to Division 3 in 2025. But he also quickly saw the potential.

“When I took the job, my first objective was qualifying for finals. That’s the number one thing as a coach. This is where our journey begins – win enough games to play finals. We never put an upper limit on it. Let’s get the girls competitive and playing finals footy.”

The Saints rocketed out of the blocks, and by the halfway point of the season had dropped just one game – to Ormond by 5 points in Round 5.

“Having not been involved in the VAFA Women’s comp, and therefore not knowing what other teams were around us, I wasn’t sure where we would fit in to begin with. But even after that loss to Ormond, I remember thinking, ‘We’ve got half a chance here. We’ve got some talent to play with.’

But a large hurdle was about to present itself – one familiar to many VAFA coaches. The dreaded ‘Tullamarine Flu,’ as players head off for European summer holidays.

“We were flying, but then I find out we’re losing players at the back end of the year. We lost our captain Holly Wilson, who is an inspirational leader, amazing person and fantastic footballer – she could have won our Best & Fairest. She’s such a good person and leader. Losing her was a really daunting thought.

“Plus, we had other girls heading overseas too. I remember driving home thinking, ‘This season could all be undone really quickly if we don’t recruit some reinforcements.’

“So, I went from feeling confident to suddenly being unsure on whether we’d even have enough players to play finals. Our numbers had always been thin, with 23 or 24 generally available before we lost a few to injury. Then, take out the girls heading overseas, and we were down to 18 players.

“We urgently needed to recruit mid-season, which is obviously hard to do. Fortunately, we managed to tap into some past players that hadn’t been around for a while, but boasted Premier A experience. They were really handy acquisitions to top up our list for half-a-dozen games at the backend of the season.

“Otherwise, things could have derailed quickly.”

St Mary’s Salesian faced Ormond again in a top-of-the-table Round 13 blockbuster between the two 11-1 sides, in what would be Holly Wilson’s final game before heading overseas, and the Saints farewelled their skipper in style, with a convincing 39-point win.

“After that game was a telling moment in our season,” Terry recalls.

“Even though our three remaining games were against teams well below Ormond on the ladder, these matches were suddenly a scary prospect. ‘Are we good enough?’ We needed our girls to realise that we could win without Holly.”

And win they did, chalking up victories over Albert Park (23 points), Prahran (117 points), and Wattle Park (21 points) to finish the home-and-away season as minor premiers with a 15-1 record, 2 games clear of Ormond.

“Credit where credit is due, the girls were absolutely fantastic,” Terry glows.

“Adrienne Jones – AJ – stepped up as captain and did an amazing job to steady the ship and keep everyone on the same path. I was very fortunate to have such a great group of people around me.”

On to finals and a highly anticipated Second Semi Final clash with Ormond at Elsternwick Park. Both teams boasted a victory against the other in the regular season, and it was the Monders leading from siren-to-siren to post a comfortable 20-point win that propelled them straight through to Grand Final Day.

“They were clearly the better side on the day,” Terry reflects. “Although we didn’t do a lot wrong.”

“We played on a really big ground at Elsternwick Park, which suited Ormond, and the wind was blowing a gale to one end. So, after the game, my message was ‘We’ve done the hard work, we deserve to be in the position we’re in and get a second chance. We now need to go back to what we know and do well.”

A Preliminary Final against Old Camberwell at Trevor Barker Beach Oval awaited, and the Saints led by 19 points at the final change before the Wellers did all the scoring in the last term to close within 4 points at the 14-minute mark. It set the stage for a heart-stopping finish.

“We’d beaten them quite easily the first time (30 points in Round 10), but this Prelim turned out to be one of the most nerve-wracking games I’ve ever been involved in. The time clock is different in finals with time-on added, so we had no idea of the time remaining. We had to change a lot of things with the extra game time – people shifting into different positions as fatigue kicked in. They threw everything at us.”

The Saints dug in late and found a way to hang on by 4 points and set up a rematch with Ormond on Grand Final Day.

“Getting over that challenge gave us a sense of confidence that we were back where we needed to be,” said Terry.

“We had gone from being confident in ourselves before the Ormond final – maybe a little over-confident or arrogant – to getting that kick in the backside from Ormond, which put us in the right mindset to face them again.

“We turned up on Grand Final Day with nothing to lose. Ormond were now expected to win, especially given they had Hannah Foran back in their team after playing for Port Melbourne all year. She’s an elite talent and so hard to stop.

“Win, and it’s a bonus. Lose, and we still overachieved for the year – even though expectations change along the way, of course. So, I wasn’t nervous for one minute on Grand Final Day.”

“But I knew my girls had the fight in them. We needed to stick to our game plan, and we had also come up with some different things to try around Ormond’s best players. We let Indy Harrison off the chain in the Second Semi Final. We knew that if we gave her time and space again, she could kick 3 or 4 goals, and it’s game over.

“So, we had set plans to run with Hannah and Indy. If we could shut them down, we were a red-hot show.

“Collectively, we had to make sure we stopped their easy transition forward, and we certainly worked our backsides off doing so, and the scoreboard reflected it.”

It was a tight, low-scoring Grand Final. The Saints booted 2 goals to 1 to lead by 8 points at the first break, before Ormond kicked 2 to 1 in the second term to be a single point up at half-time.

St Mary’s Salesian used the breeze to kick another 2 goals to 1 in the third term to get their noses in front by 5 points at the last change, before an agonisingly tense final term had everyone at Moorleigh Reserve holding their breath.

Courtney Gaze-Persson kicked a goal to put the Monders a point up at the 2-minute mark, then added a behind 4 minutes in to double their lead.

The Saints had a couple of chances in time-on, posting behinds at the 18 and 21-minute marks to level the Grand Final late in the final term.

“Overtime never even entered our minds,” Terry recalls. “It was never on the radar. I’d never thought of it, and in all my years of footy, I’d never been involved in it. In hindsight, it might be something we need to practice a bit, given women’s footy tends to have lower scoring, so it’s always a possibility.”

The final siren sounded shortly after – the Women’s Division 3 Grand Final was heading for Extra Time, as players and officials from both teams stared at each other incredulously. Now what??!

“I was pretty lucky that our team manager, Pete Leman, had a little bit of understanding of what would happen next. He’s been a calming influence on what we do, and he grabbed me straight away. The captain got taken over to the umpires for an explanation of what was going to happen.

“Panic can set in amongst the players in that situation, so the key thing was to get them all together in the huddle as quickly as possible. Just start talking to them. Eyes up on me. Focus on me. Give me five minutes of your time right now, and we’ll give you a clear message.

“We know it will be overtime, so even if we don’t exactly know how that works yet, there’s still a game on. We’re still playing football. We kept praising them. No negatives. Everything we did focused on the positives, because the girls can be harder on themselves than I am.

“Each break, we’d delivered the same message. ‘This is what we’re doing.’ Our girls are just willing to listen, learn and take it all on board. Even when we got into overtime, we had set plans. So, once I got their attention and everyone settled down after that initial shock of extra time, the girls responded really well.

“We soon learned that Ormond would be kicking with the breeze first, so our focus switched to that. We need to shut them down and play for time. Defend for the first 5-minute period, then attack in the second period.

“We also knew that there was no coach’s address between the two periods, so we needed to talk about the second period as well. We’d learnt our lesson from the Second Semi Final about rotating players more, so we’d had player rotations happening all day.

“I spoke to the players first, then the bench. I worked heavily with our assistants and runner about our clear message for the second period as well. We knew we wouldn’t have any control of what’s going on. Extra time was always going to be largely out of our control. So now it was all about the players executing. Everything had to be perfect.”

The Saints knew they had to dig in and defend into the breeze in the first extra time period.

“We played really negative in that first period – play wide on the far side, don’t worry about attacking. Try and keep them scoreless, or at least still within reach. As it happened, we actually managed to score a point into the breeze while holding them scoreless, which put us in front.

“Then in the second period, we wanted an open forward line so we pulled all our forwards up the ground and left it open for Georgia Cropley to try and get on the end of something. Let’s attack up the middle and play fast football. Ormond were very good and attacked into the breeze as well. We had to play a bit of defensive football, but needed to keep that attacking mindset.”

Cropley added a behind to give the Saints a 2-point lead as the clock continued to tick.

“We had a rough idea of when the siren was going to go. Once it got to the last couple of minutes, we looked to shut it down and take our time.”

The siren sounded shortly after to give St Mary’s Salesian their first women’s flag since 2018 in the most dramatic of circumstances.

“It was just pure elation,” Terry reflects, his voice starting to quiver.

“It was so emotional – I still feel it today. It was relief, it was excitement – it was a lot of things. To win a premiership at the club you love so much. I came in and I didn’t know what I was going to get from Day 1 of pre-season. To have past players, my parents, my wife – so many people supporting me – it’s everything.”

Terry embraced his Dad in a moment he’ll never forget.

“We were both in tears. Both just so proud. He was extremely proud of me.

“It was pretty special. Dad’s getting older, so to have him back around the club was absolutely fantastic. I own a business and still live in Bendigo, so coaching the team meant I was down in Melbourne a lot more and could drop in to see Mum and Dad before training. I got to see more of them than previously.

“And to have him watching everything I did was a massive highlight. To have him back around and supporting me – it’s everything I ever wanted to do. A good mate of mind said later, ‘You’ll never get that moment again, will you?’ And he was right. That special moment with my Dad, sharing the elation, the relief and then the excitement. It was crazy, with people jumping on you, cuddling you, high-fiving.

“As a coach, you want to win finals and a Grand Final. Did I think we’d do it in my first year? Probably not. It’s come earlier than a lot of people probably expected.

“The club is in such a good spot. The men were successful too, the Ressies and the Under 19s were successful, as were the Thirds. To have five sides playing finals is unbelievable. It shows the hard work that so many people do behind the scenes.

“Our President, Vice-President and Committee have given me so much support. I re-signed for 2026 halfway through last season, we’re all so happy with the path and journey that we’re on together.

“The entire essence of our club is mateship. I’ve been involved in women’s footy for a fair while, but I’ve never known a group of girls as united and on the same page. The camaraderie is insane. We’ve got a group of 30 or so girls and there’s no rotten apple. Everyone is there for each other. They love training, love game days, love playing footy together and celebrating wins.”

“And we celebrated long and hard! We went back to the rooms that night – nothing silly. The girls took their medals with them every time they went out. They rode the wave while the men were still playing. It just continually rolled on. Once the men won their Grand Final, the medals came back out again. We took the cup and the flag up to my place in Bendigo one day, which was great.

“There were a lot of ‘thank yous’ and a lot of love in this group of girls. They appreciate what I give and the commitment I made. They know that I appreciate everything they put in as well.

“It was a hell of a year and such a bloody enjoyable one.”

Plans to defend the title are well underway, with player retention the initial focus.

“At this stage, we only lose one player – Soph Tsakonas – who is off to Canada. We’ve got a couple of past players returning, and a couple of new girls, plus Holly Wilson, who didn’t play finals.

“We’re not sure which grade we’ll be playing in yet. We’d be really happy to be promoted as we want to keep getting better. This is the exciting thing with the VAFA’s promotion/relegation system – you earn the right to play in a higher division against new teams at new grounds. Everything is new again.

“We’re super keen for the year ahead. Our pre-Christmas training was really good.”

“We’re a pretty tight unit, and there’s still a lot more development to come. Our Number 1 growth area will be around aggression at the ball, our tackle pressure, and always putting up a fight to earn possession.

“We may tweak a few things this year and do some different things to add some polish. With a core group of 20-30, we can change things up a little. Our girls are athletes – they want to be the best they can. We want and need them to become better footballers, and we’ll work hard towards that.

“Footy is a religion. It does everything for me. It’s a great way to get out of your own head and into a different zone. When you’re out on the track or in the middle of a game, you’re not thinking about anything but football.

“Wherever we are, we’ll be trying to play finals again.”

For Terry Burt, home is where the heart is. And now there’s a flag and a cup there as well.

PART 1 of St Mary’s Salesian flag feature – the Men win the premiership:

https://www.vafa.com.au/news/2025/12/10/flag-feature-the-saints-came-marching-in-part-1/