Panmure's Sam Mahony to play game 200 in WDFNL elimination final

The Bulldogs will be keen to celebrate Sam Mahony's 200^th senior match for the club in style at Allansford Recreation Reserve, south-west Victoria.

Mahony, who played in the club's 2012/13 flags, said the group was in a good space ahead of the knockout game.

"We're going to go in fairly confident, I think our preparation has been pretty good and we've got a strong list so we'll go in confident of putting up a good show," he told The Standard's Main Break podcast.

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He feels the game will be won through the middle of the ground.

"I think their midfield is probably key, whoever wins the midfield battle will go a long way to winning the game," he said.

"So if we can limit their damaging players that will help us a fair bit."

And Mahony, a midfielder/forward, will be on the frontline in that battle.

"I'm not blessed with much pace so I'm an inside mid and I try and get my hands on the ball and feed it out to our young fellas that can run a bit quicker than I can," he said.

While Panmure has long been renowned as good around the contest, Mahony explained the Bulldogs had worked to improve their outside running game.

"The last two years, when Banty's (coach Chris Bant) been at the helm, we've really tried to work on that outside spread," he said.

Mahony played juniors at Allansford and a couple of years in the seniors.

He then played two seasons of senior footy with Hampden league club, South Warrnambool.

The milestone player joined the Bulldogs in 2010.

His three brothers - Ben, Paddy and Tom - also play at the Bulldogs as well as his cousin, Tom Wright.

Mahony's dad is also the runner for the senior team.

He said his oldest brother, Ben, couldn't play this weekend as he was stuck in Melbourne with the coronavirus lockdown.

The Bulldogs suffered a shock loss to bottom-five team Russells Creek in round 18.

"It probably wasn't a bad result, it was probably better that we didn't go in and win by 10 goals and go through the motions," Mahony said.

"We got a bit of a reality check and we'll go back and work pretty hard at training this week and rectify a few things for the South Rovers game."

The milestone man gave a big thanks to his footy/netball club. "It's a great place to be, it's been my second home for the last 11 years, on and off, through cricket as well," he said.

The 31-year-old, a dairy farmer at Wangoom in the Western District of Victoria, feels his job helps him recover from matches.

"I think it ties in pretty well with footy, it's a physically demanding job but I believe it helps," he said.

"You play on Saturday and get up and milk (cows) on a Sunday morning and you get to work out all those sore spots and by the time Tuesday rolls around you're cherry ripe."