There is light at the end of the tunnel, and while there’s a slew of high-pressure matches waiting on the other side, it’s rapidly approaching ‘go time’.

After taking last weekend off with the split round bye, the Myrtleford Alpine Saints Football Netball Club will resume their 2026 season this weekend at Yarrawonga’s JC Lowe Oval, a ground at which they haven’t won a game of senior football since 2021.

With six matches left in the season, the senior Saints sit third overall, two games ahead of the Pigeons in fifth.

Senior football coach Craig Millar said the last six matches, especially the Yarrawonga clash, would show if his side had what it takes to match it with the best in the league, or even potentially contest a flag.

“With six weeks to go in the home and away season, it was nice to recharge the batteries a bit, and obviously it’s been challenging the last few weeks with access to our ground, so it was nice to get through that period and get back on the track this week,” he said.

“They’re one of the form teams of the competition at the moment.

“They’ve been dismantling a number of clubs over the last month, and we were lucky to get away with the win earlier in the season, to be honest – I think we were four goals down at half-time.

“We know when they have their best team on the park they’re a real contender, and it’s been a while since we’ve won over there.

“We’ll need to play our very best in order to get the result we’re chasing - it’s a big game for us.”

The match will be decided in large parts at the contest, with the Pigeons boasting a number of gun midfielders who can turn the game on its head.

“I think both sides are pretty good at contested footy, their midfield is a pretty experienced midfield and I feel that’s their strength, but I feel like the form of our midfield has been really pleasing over the last month,” Millar said.

“I’m looking forward to those two midfields going head-to-head on the weekend.

“Clearly they’ve got a number of really good players across the three lines and so do we, so I feel like the match-ups a really good one this week.

“We just need to play the best version of what we do – get our running game going, when we’re on with our ball use that can be really damaging for us, and when we get our opportunity in front of goal we need to make the most of them.

“You don’t get a lot of opportunities when you play against good sides, and so we’ll just need to make sure we make the most of every one this week.”

The Saints will be without defender Zac Pethybridge for the next fortnight, after he was handed a three-match suspension for striking Wodonga Raiders’ Charlie Johnson, downgraded to two matches with an early guilty plea.

Footage of the incident found its way online and went semi-viral, even gaining national coverage and generating more than a few distasteful comments.

“Zac’s okay, considering what’s been going on around him,” Millar said.

“He’s accepted the sanction that was passed down to him by the league, and we’ve all got to move on from there.

“He’s human like everyone else, we all make mistakes.

“It’s been an interesting period for him and the club more broadly, but we’ll move on – we’ve dealt with it the way the league has asked us to deal with it, and we just move on from there.”

The Saints take on Yarrawonga at JC Lowe Oval this Saturday, with netball from 9am and football from 10am.