They have shared plenty of premiership glory with Workies over the years but for as long as Issac Farmilo and Ehren Hazell have been playing with the Norwest Strikers - Baulkham Hills, the Sydney premier league silverware has eluded them.
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Not anymore with the Strikers defeating former Workies team-mate Brandon Horner's Moorebank-Liverpool side 3-2 in the grand final to be crowned the 2020 champions.
Farmilo said it was "very satisfying" to finally breakthrough having made the semi-final stage every year of the seven he has been with them. For Hazell it has been six years, five in first grade, and for both a lot of Saturday's in the car travelling from Tamworth down to Sydney and back again.
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"So it was good to finally make the effort worth it," Farmilo added.
Hazell was a real strike weapon for the Strikers. He was their top-scorer, and second top for the whole competition with 14 goals, while Farmilo chimed in with nine.
He was by his own admission "pretty rubbish" at the start but as the season went on played better.
"I think like everyone because it was a disrupted season I built into a bit more," he said.
They had just played their last trial game and were only a couple of weeks away from the season start when everything got shut down.
His winters having been consumed by hockey for pretty much as long as he can remember and feeling like the Strikers had "started to put all the pieces together", Farmilo said the prospect of not playing again this season was tough at the start.
Initially he "didn't do anything" but then he got laid off work for four weeks and started getting "a bit bored" so he got back into some training and "got really fit again".
But then he started working again and didn't have the same time to commit to training, so by the time the season actually rolled around he "needed to work back up towards it".
He said generally he has found training a lot harder.
Not being involved in programs like NSWIS and having that regular structured training, and not having the access to the fields that he did in Tamworth, it has been a bit of an adjustment.
Virtually not picking up a stick between the game on Saturday and training on Thursday, it's a lot more about making sure you "put the kilometres in your legs".
He had thought the grand final would be the last time he touched a stick until next year but he has since been invited to be part of the upcoming Future Pride camp.
"They're going to have a four game series at the end of November," he said.
"Ehren and I have both been invited to that so that will be good."
After getting a taste of the Hockey One with the Adelaide Fire last year (this year's edition was cancelled), Farmilo said he would love to play at that level again. Ideally with the Pride but he'd happily pull on the Fire colours again.
