FOR the past two season Minyip-Murtoa’s senior footballers have set the benchmark during the regular season only to fall short in the grand final.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
As another big pre-season comes to a close coach Damian Cameron knows his squad will remember what it felt like to come so close and he hopes it will spur them on again in 2018.
“The season has come around quickly again but after the disappointment of last year it’s good to be able to get out there again to have another crack,” he said.
The side has added extra depth to its squad this year with a number of former players returning but will miss Cooper Bateson and Oliver Young. 2017 Best and fairest Kade Petering is also set to spend the season on the sideline after injuring himself in the final round last season. Incoming players Callum Hobbs and Mitch Cronin will go some way to filling the holes left by the absent players.
“We are going to keep working on the same things we did last season – it allowed us to win 14 games in a row so that is really promising,” he said. “We’ll tweak a few things but bringing in a couple of extras runner will certainly help as well with the style we brought in last season.”
Ultimately Cameron believes it will be consistency that will give his side a chance of going one better.
“We won a lot of games in the final half or quarter,” he said. “When you are doing that week in, week out you really have to work hard. If we play consistent footy through four quarters we won’t struggle as much through games and that will help us in the back half of the season.”
Q and A with Damian Cameron
What has you most excited for this season?
Probably how even the competition is going to be. There were probably a couple of sides last year where in the second half of the year you thought you should win if you played decent footy. Going into a game and being nervous every Friday night is the excitement of footy.
Who has impressed you on the track so far?
Callum Hobbs has not stepped a foot wrong – he’s super fit now and tears up the track every night, he’s one I’m really looking forward to playing with. Brayden Ison has had another solid pre-season, Matt Coleman is living back in the area for the first time in a long time and is training more than he was – I think he can really take the league by surprise.
Is it good to have a lot of former players return to the club?
It’s something that president (Scott Arnold) and the committee were really excited about. Probably the star among them is Lachie Johns who has had a few years away at Waubra and has now come back which we are pumped about. The quality of the people is what has the president the most excited.