The Southampton Titans won the 2008 Aussie Rules UK South Grand Final in convincing fashion on Saturday. 

Facing the Sussex Swans, a team that the Titans had failed to challenge through their two regular season matches, and who knocked them out of the 2007 Semi-finals, the Titans entered the game as under-dogs.  But a first quarter assault by the Titans, set the tone for the match, with the Titans kicking two goals in the first couple of minutes before captain Peter Stroud hobbled off the ground with a strained hamstring, not returning for the remainder of the match.

This didn’t slow the Titans down, as they amassed a 7 goal to nil first quarter lead, 3 of those to full forward Mark Lazzarotto, and mid-fielder Darryn O’Connor kicking two.  The second quarter saw the game tighten with Lazzarotto and O’Connor adding another goal each, and the Sussex Swans finally managed to get their first goal of the day.  At half time, the Titans had a handy 47-point lead, 10-5-65 to 2-6-18.

The Sussex Swans came out firing after the half time break, and scored a couple early goals to start the quarter.  Lazzarotto managed to kick his fifth goal for the match to momentarily stem the tide, before the teams traded goals for the most part of the term.  Sussex then finished with the last two goals of the quarter to bring the margin back to 25 points, and hold the momentum going into the final quarter.

The Titans struck the early blow in the last quarter, with Matt Clark kicking his second goal for the day within 30 seconds of the final quarter starting.  With a second goal almost as quickly, the momentum had swung back to the Titans, who rampaged home kicking 8 goals to 4 in the final quarter.  Lazzarotto and O’Connor both added to their total, finishing with 6 and 4 respectively, and the Titans ran out 52 point winners, 21-14-140 to 13-10-88.   

Mark Lazzarotto, who spent time at both full-forward and in the ruck received man of the match honors.  Later in the evening at the league presentation dinner he also managed to pick up the league best & fairest medal, polling 11 votes to win.  The leagues leading goal scorer was English rookie Will Worthington of the Sussex Swans who finished with 35 goals in the regular season, all while sitting out the last couple rounds with a calf injury, and also placed equal second on the league B&F with 10 votes.