It may well be the most wonderful time of the year, but Wangaratta Rovers’ footballers won’t be counting down the sleeps until Santa comes – they’re wishing to get back on the park together and keep preparing to defend their crown.

The Rovers officially broke for the Christmas period on 17 December after an intense four-and-a-half-week block, with training set to resume in the second week of January.

Hawks football operations manager Mario Antonello said the group would still be putting in the hard work over the break in unofficial sessions.

“Every Christmas, the boys organise a run on Christmas morning,” he said.

“At 7am, they go down to the Rovers ground and they do 100 100m, they do 10km of sprints on Christmas morning.

“There’d be 50 or 60 guys down there, it’s crazy.

“Even though we train Monday and Wednesdays at the moment, these guys are doing their own sessions outside of that – there’d be an unofficial session at least once a week that somebody will organise, whether it’s Will Nolan or Tom Boyd or Harry Nolan.

“These young kids will put messages into the group and all of a sudden there’s 25 of them down at the Rovers ground doing a skills session.

“I wouldn’t say there’s one particular leader that’s driving the group, it seems to be a collective thought process at the moment where everyone’s trying to be the best, everybody wants to play seniors and they work bloody hard to do it.”

It’s been a quieter off-season for the Rovers on the recruiting front, signing VFL weapon Mitch Hardie and welcoming back Tristan Lenaz from his stint at Beechworth.

“It’s pretty well all the established list - we’ve got a couple of the third guys that have come up that will play reserves this year, so there are new faces in that sense, but other than that it’s pretty well the established group,” Antonello said.

“On the recruiting side for us, I won’t use the word ‘easy’, but it’s manageable, you know you’ve only got x amount of points to play with.

“It probably puts more of an emphasis on what you’ve got coming through because your one-pointers, your local players, you really want as many of them playing as you can.”

After back-to-back senior flags, trickles of complacency could potentially have seeped into the successful outfit, but Antonello said the players were putting in the hard work to establish an undeniable dynasty.

“Prior to a few years ago, these guys were on the back of some pretty hefty losing streaks, so the winning component of it which everyone’s loving is a relatively new thing, especially for the senior group,” he said.

“The reserves and thirds have always been relatively strong.

“Now those thirds groups, those ressies boys are coming up who are used to the winning mentality, they probably don’t need too much motivation because just wanting to be the best or be better than the next person is probably motivation enough.”

The 2026 Ovens and Murray season commences on Friday, 3 April.