A plethora of messages targetting the club for its acceptance of the premiership flooded the league site just hours after the club's executive was informed of the decision.
Echuca Football Club was named premier of the league when a GVL board meeting decided to abandon the season and award the premiership to the team which finished the home-and-away season on top of the ladder.
Ongoing lockdowns due to the COVID-19 outbreak has prevented any football/netball finals series from starting and with so much uncertainty about when such lockdowns are likely to be lifted, the GVL board voted to bring the season to a premature close.
The Murray Bombers were second on the ladder after 16 rounds of the season, but went past Seymour in the final home-and-away round with an 81-point final-round win against Shepparton.
Seymour, with many of its Melbourne-based stars unavailable because of lockdown, led for three quarters against Mooroopna - only to be held goalless in the final term and lose by four points.
They were passed on the ladder by not only Echuca, but also Euroa.
Seymour finished third, with only percentage separating the top three teams who all had nine wins for the year.
Simon Eishold, the club's football operations manager, said the comments were bizarre considering the club did not play any part in the Goulburn Valley League's decision to aware it the 2021 premiership.
“We did not claim the premiership, it was awarded to us at a meeting we had no part in,” he said.
Mr Eishold, a four-time best and fairest winner with Echuca Football Club, received the news after coming off a weekend following his beloved Melbourne Football Club extraordinary after-the-siren win against Geelong which saw the Demons calim the AFL minor premiership.
But only days later he has been left flat, and angry, with the response from the Goulburn Valley football public to a decision outside of the Murray Bombers’ control.
Eishold follows the fortunes of his former club, Melbourne, closely having gone deep into the 1987 finals series as a player with the club, and again the following year when the Demons reached the grand final - though he missed much of that season through injury.
Fortunately there was a measured approach to some of the comments by those more understanding of the situation Echuca Football Club had been placed in, and even the odd congratulatory message recognising the club's performance in the stop-start season.
Mr Eishold said he was acutely aware of the frustration of football clubs, including his own, over the COVID-19 interrupted season and the eventual announcement of Echuca as premiers.
“We didn't ask for this and certainly didn't expect it,” he said.
“The league has come up with this decision out of the blue.
“I was aware of a meeting held earlier in the week (last week), which I understood had decided to wait 10 days before making any kind of announcement.
“Three days later and I hear late on Thursday afternoon that the season has been called off and we have been named the premier.”
Echuca Football Club was awarded premier status by the league executive in four different grades, as a result of finishing the reduced home-and-away season on top of the respective competition ladders.
Mr Eishold said he would have much preferred the club to be announced as the champion club, the award which carries with it the highly regarded George Hunter trophy.
“To me that is the true measure of a club's entire success,” he said.
“We would have been much more comfortable with being named the champion club, rather than being awarded premier status under these circumstances.”
He described the awarding of the premiership as "hollow" and felt as though the club had been "dumped in it", with the awarding of the 2021 flag making it an easy target for opposition clubs and their supporters.
“Our club has worked extremely hard to ensure our playing personnel has been well looked after during the year,” Mr Eishold said.
“We established a health and wellbeing sub committee and regularly conducted Zoom meetings with our player group to make sure they were okay during the year.”
Mr Eishold said a lot of time and effort had been invested into the season, which made the flippant comments of the league's Facebook followers even more disappointing.
“It has been a huge effort to get to this point of the season,” he said.
“None of us wanted it to end this way and to see our players subjected to this type of criticism is very unfair.
“I don't think we have heard the last of this decision.”
