By claiming the 2008 Bendigo Football League premiership Eaglehawk overtook Sandhurst's record of twenty-six such triumphs, making the Two Blues the competition's most successful club. Eaglehawk was established in 1880, the same year that saw the inception of the BFL (as the Bendigo Football Association), but it was not until the following season that Eaglehawk entered the competition. By the end of the nineteenth century the club had already enjoyed premiership success on ten occasions, and its status as a league heavyweight was unquestioned. The consistent accumulation of additional flags throughout most of the ensuing century only served to consolidate and enhance that status, although unlike during the 1880s and 1890s the club never really managed to maintain its dominance over extended periods. Indeed, all fifteen of the Two Blues' twentieth century premierships were won singly, with only the first decade of the century yielding more than two.

Eaglehawk's 2007 premiership triumph sprang from the team's ability to find its best form when it mattered most. After losing their final home and away match of the year to minor premiers Gisborne by a demoralisingly emphatic 93 point margin, the Two Blues might reasonably have been expected to fall in a heap in their qualifying final clash with a Sandhurst side that had won comfortably when the two teams last met a month earlier at Eaglehawk's home ground of Canterbury Park. However, far from collapsing, the Two Blues inexplicably produced their best performance of the season in romping to victory by 114 points. A week later they stunned most observers by handing Gisborne only its second defeat of the year when they edged home in a high scoring second semi final by 7 points. Even so, most of the smart money was on the Bulldogs when the same two teams confronted one another a fortnight later in the 'big one'.