You had a very different season with a lot of new players coming in how did you find the group went this year?
It was different. We only had 17 players from last year that continued over, so there were a heap of new girls that came in from the draft, from WAFLW. We traded a few in so it was a bit of a different feel and having two seasons in one year certainly made for a different environment, albeit a couple of months after the finish of the last season. We had a good mix of youth and experience that we brought in. Jess Sedunary from Adelaide played in an AFLW premiership before and she’s an experienced athlete so she brought a lot to the program and then we got some young talent like Ella Roberts and Mikayla Western from the WAFLW. We’ve got a lot of those young players that have stamped their mark on our team so the blend of youth and experience have made this group gel which has been a little bit of a different feel, but it has been good.
Any clear highlights of the year that stood out for you, especially from your midfield group?
I think from our group the key highlight for us was the GWS win in round four, it was our first real convincing win where we established a clear brand of footy. I remember in the lead up to that game we were talking about what we were going to do coming up against GWS and how they like to handball and get those chains started, as a midfield group it was very much about stopping that. This was the first game in my time as a coach I’ve really seen the team implement a plan and shut down an opposition like that and it was consistent across four quarters. Off the back of that game, I’ve had the most comments afterwards from friends and family saying that was a really predictable brand of football and it was something we could see and really understand what they were trying to do. From a coaches point of view, seeing our plan come together and implemented in that way was my biggest highlight of the year definitely.
Arguably the midfield battle is the most important area of the field in the AFLW competition with clubs sporting their best players in that area of the field. How did you approach that as a group?
The midfield is where most games are won and lost. We’ve got a lot of talent in our midfield as well, Emma Swanson, Bella Lewis and Aish McCarthy, I just put to them that it’s the challenge to play against the best players and if we can win the ball there and win the clearance battle, we can keep the ball in our front half, and territory in the AFLW is so important. Challenging the individuals to play against the better players is something I leant into this year and whether that would be giving someone a job or targeting the opposition’s best players. Emma Swanson should be in the conversation to be one of the top handful of players in the competition the way she’s been playing the past few years. We wanted to identify and respect that we are playing some of the best players in the competition but at the same time really challenge ourselves and get right up there with those players.
Your midfield core of Emma Swanson, Aisling McCarthy and Dana Hooker all performed for you this year. How crucial is it to have that group performing for the rest of your side?
It’s definitely important for our leaders to be playing well. In terms of a midfield point-of-view having Aish McCarthy play a full season was really crucial; she’s had an interrupted last few seasons. Emma Swanson backing up her club championship winning season again and Dana Hooker as well was one of our leaders who started in the midfield, but we found a spot for her up in the forward line putting good pressure on and I think that opened the door for Bella Lewis to stand up and really demonstrate her leadership as a mid as well. Having those key pillars in our group playing really well consistently helps us, especially in a group with a lot of inexperience. We’ve got a lot of girls who have played less than 10 to 15 games which would put us in that lower spectrum in terms of games played across the league. To have those leaders playing well across the year really gives those younger players something to look up at and it helps us drive to keep playing consistent football.
A couple of rookies stepped up to the plate this year for you - who were you impressed with and who do you see making a big impact next season?
Having a lot of young players, we were always going to have a couple step up and play well. I look at Sarah Lakay who had her best season. She played seven or eight games last year but to have a full season this year and to finish second in the competition in hit-outs, she’s come along leaps and bounds and really given our midfield first use of the ball. She’ll only get better as she gets more experience. Players like Ella Roberts has come in and really made an impact straight away and even Charlie Thomas who was my pick last year has gone from strength to strength and has cemented herself in our backline and as a key pillar in our side. There’s certainly a lot of young players I could go on about, Courtney Rowley had a really good year in her second year of AFLW, even Jaide Britton has held a spot in the wing role for us. So there’s been young players doing well and that’s probably where we are as a group, but we needed those young players to step up and we’ve been fortunate enough that a lot of them have.
Finally, in the off-season what’s the number one area to work on for your group and what was your message to them going into the off-season?
The biggest message from me and the other coaches was just to relax first of all. Pretty much all of them have played two seasons of football in a year, whether it be in AFLW or WAFLW/VFLW or state league footy before joining us. So relax and reset first of all, have a break from football and then set themselves up for a good pre-season. This is the first time they’ve gotten a lengthy break before they need to re-join us next year, so I think there’s a lot of work to be done especially with their fitness. I think the way the AFLW is trending now the fitter teams win. You’ve got to be able to run, you’ve got to be able to work hard and we’ve certainly taken a step forward this year, but we need to keep working hard in that area. You look at teams like Melbourne, they didn’t stop running all day (against us). That’s the type of footy we want to play. We will get there with a good off-season and we can certainly take another step forward in that respect. We will also need to get back together and start to work on cohesion as a group, we’ve had a lot of changes and new players come into the team so having that time and ability to work as a group a little bit more will help the players get to know each other that little bit better, which will certainly help us.
