Southern United earned it’s place in the Pennant E Grand Final with a win against minor premiers Footscray at Monash University.

The two league meetings had been close affairs and this game was played in similar fashion.

The opening minutes were cautiously by both sides as they tried to exert themselves on the game.

Southern had the better of the chances in the first half and ran close on a couple of occasions.

The deadlock was broken around the 25 minute mark when a penetrating run into the circle from James Erbacher led to a goal mouth scramble and Dylan Willcock was on hand to finish from close range.

Excellent midfield work from Luke Karabatsos, Ben Cohen, Andrew Layzell and Simon (Sam) Willcock kept Footscray limited to minor advances into the Southern half.

Footscray earned a penalty corner right on the stroke of half-time.  As the strike came in high above the backboard past keeper David McPherson, Southern closed out the first half 1-0 up.

The second half was again very close with Zak Bahramis having the best chance to put the game further out of reach for Footscray – Zak just missed from close range.

Tireless hustle from forwards Chris Silvers, Chris Hughes and Don Fernandez made life tough for Footscray and provided plenty of leads for Southern to maintain possession.

It looked like Southern were going to see the game out with a narrow margin until a midfield turn-over gave Footscray possession and the resulting bouncing pass was eventually turned in to level the scores.

Southern restarted the match and continued to press for a winner.

Full time was reached with the scores level and golden goal extra time saw the teams line up for a further challenge.

Josh Sweeney and Brian Paxton continued to effectively distribute the ball down the right and a further probing run from James Erbacher produced a penalty corner for Southern.

Brian Paxton converted the corner to seal the game and a place in the Grand Final in two weeks time.