High-flying Somerset Eagles are hoping their First Division Shield success is the start of bigger and better things to come.

The White Hill club upstaged heavily-fancied Robin Hood on penalties in an exciting final at Wellington Oval on New Year’s Day to finally get their hands on the prize after being knocked out at the semi-final stage in the past two seasons.

The success has rekindled a flame at the club and wider Somerset Bridge community, which the club’s management are now looking to capitalise on going forward in pursuit of other objectives.

“Obviously, right now there’s a level of energy and excitement, and also more people coming around that’s created the energy [about] what we do next,” a club spokesperson told The Royal Gazette. “The success has kind of re-lit the energy behind bringing the club back to the way it was. Everyone is motivated; the community, the players, staff, everybody.

“Hopefully we go from strength to strength, and we also want to bring more of the community into it. Because we had a celebration and the community came into it and it’s rehashed the history. We have been really just trying to grow the community as a whole and keep it going.”

Having tasted success, Eagles now have their sights set on achieving the coveted Shield and league double. They are third in the table with seven points, eight behind leaders and West End rivals Somerset Trojans, who top the pile on goal difference over Hood.

“That’s definitely the talk right now,” the club spokesperson said.

“We have the game in hand, and the first couple of games we were OK and have improved a lot since then — because we did have a shaky start. We’ve improved a lot as a team since the beginning of the season when we had those losses, so definitely why not push for it?”

Also on the club’s agenda is establishing a junior programme to groom future generations of players.

“Right now we are working on bringing in some youth teams hopefully in the fall,” the spokesperson said.

Key to the club’s recent success has been the input and guidance of coaching staff.

“The success can definitely be attributed to the coaching of the team and the chemistry between the coaches,” the club spokesperson said.

“We have Troy Smith, and have also had [in] the last few months, Stephen Burrows, as well as assistance from Jumaane Davis, who played for the team before, captained the team before and actually won the Shield before.

“Even Stevie has won it before, so the chemistry between those coaches has been amazing. I‘ve heard the players say they like what they see; they like how they handle the different aspects and how it’s all come together, as well as the discipline instilled.

“We have amazing training numbers; almost everybody comes to training and I think having that consistent training and longer training sessions helped us lot in terms of getting through extra-time in the Shield final. That definitely played a big role in making it that far.”

Confidence was soaring in the Eagles camp heading into the Shield final, which remained intact despite having squandered a one-goal advantage nine minutes from the end of regulation and falling behind in the penalty shoot-out.

“We were 100 per cent certain going into this that we had it. We were 100 per cent confident we could pull it off no matter what happened,” the club spokesperson said.

“When we went down, when we missed the penalty, we were still 100 per cent sure all the way through we had it, which in itself is pretty inspiring.”