THE Bendigo Pioneers will be looking to further strengthen their ties within the Swan Hill community over the coming months, as preparations for the 2022 Boys and Girls NAB League seasons start taking shape.
The Pioneers will once again use Swan Hill as one of their three regional training centres in the lead up to next season, with newly appointed talent operations lead David Meade and senior coach Danny O’Bree in Swan Hill last week to begin preparations alongside Swan Hill-based regional co-ordinator Luke Crow.
With 18 boys and three girls from the Central Murray and Golden Rivers Football Netball Leagues selected to begin preseason training with the hope of making it onto the Pioneers list for next season, the regional training centres are viewed as a vital piece of the puzzle, according to Meade.
“This year we’ve opened up Echuca, Swan Hill and Mildura again as regional training centres and we’ve invited over 100 17, 18 and 19-year-olds, as well as a number of 16-year-olds, into the program and we’ve employed three local development coaches to run those programs,” Meade said.
“We’ve charged them with the responsibility to run the program until the end of February – then we’ll close this base down, pick our list and training will take place in Bendigo from then on.”
“Each of the co-ordinators in our three regional centres will be employed by the AFL and Luke’s (Crow) responsibilities will be to run the training base to the standards and the training regime that we’ve set – he’s also going to be charged with overseeing talent ID throughout the season, so it’s expected that he’ll be going to games to help us build our list for 2023.”
Meade is no stranger to the Bendigo Pioneers system, having spent three years at the club as Operations Manager prior to the COVID enforced restructure within the AFL industry in 2020.
This time around though, Meade has far more responsibility on his plate, having now been charged with the task of finding our region’s next Brent Daniels, Paddy Dow or Josh Treacy.
“We do a lot of community ID during the season and that forms a part of our preseason list,” Meade said.
“In terms of our final squad, we’re only allowed to have a certain number of kids in each age group – we’ve got 40 players on the list, but we have a lot of different parameters and guidelines regarding age and physical attributes that we need to follow.”
“Throughout the preseason we’ll do some testing on their running capabilities: can they jump? Are they agile? And then obviously their skills are highly important as well – that’s where these guys come into it, the coaches identify their skills and the high-performance team will identify the physical attributes.”
“If you can jump, then try and sit on someone’s head and take a grab. If you can run, then take them on and if you get caught you get caught – we just want to let them play and then the recruiters will work out what attributes they’re after.”
“Typically, to be a NAB league player you must be elite-skilled, but you also have to have a running attribute, whether it’s running either distance or speed – you can’t turn up and not be able to run because the recruiters just won’t look at you.”
The news may get even better for the Swan Hill community, with the prospect of a NAB League game coming to town next season, if Meade gets his way.
“I want to bring some of our games out to the more regional areas next season and that includes Swan Hill,” Meade said.
“I’ve put a request into the AFL and verbally they’ve been receptive, but we’ll have to wait and see when the preliminary fixture comes out in about four weeks’ time.”
“I’m reasonably confident that we’ll be able to get a game here in Swan Hill, because I really want people to see the standard.”
“It’s hard for us to get kids to understand the standard unless they see it – and not only the kids who aspire to play NAB Cup or in the AFL, but the broader community, too. I think it’s important that the local clubs and the parents see what the standard of NAB League footy is as much as the kids that are aspiring to play in it.”
