2014 EFL Pre-Season Wiki | Tomorrow: South Croydon
THE Basin Junior Football Club President Ian Bell speaks with Dan Campbell as his club prepares for the 2014 season.
Dan Campbell: Overall, were you satisfied with what the club achieved, both on and off the field, in 2013?
Ian Bell: We certainly had good numbers across all our sides. We ended up having three teams feature in the finals – the Under 15’s won a flag. But in terms of the way all the teams performed over the course of the year, we were very, very happy. That’s certainly flowed onto this year where we’ve got very good numbers across all our sides.
Approximately how many teams do you think you will field in 2014?
We’ll have nine sides. There’s a team in every age group. We’ll have two Under 9’s, which is basically a younger-age side and an older-age side. And we’ll have teams across all other age groups up to Under 17’s.
What has the feeling been like around the club over the pre-season?
Very, very positive. Like a lot of clubs, you do a lot of your work over the pre-season. We had a sign-up day in October – pretty well most of our teams had good numbers. In fact they’ve got full team lists from that pre-Christmas sign-up. We had a season launch in mid-February and really that was everyone getting together, meeting their coaches, purchasing their gear for the year, getting mouthguards fitted for the year and all the rest of it.
The senior players put on a number of drills and activities for the kids. So it was really confirmation that all our teams had good numbers and it was a great launch for the year. There’s a lot of optimism around the place and a good coaches set-up. The kids are all pretty keen and a number of teams have already started training. Everyone’s looking forward to the year.
If you had to pick one, which team do you think is the club’s best chance of winning a premiership this season?
There’s probably a few teams that are looking pretty good and they were some of the teams that really performed well last year. That’s not to say that other teams aren’t going to perform well. But certainly, we’re looking closely at our Under 13’s and 14’s to build on the success they had last year.
Is there a particular age group of players that you need as soon as possible to fill a team ahead of Round 1?
Funnily enough, we’ve got good numbers across all ages. The EFL brought in a new rule with a new cap. I think just about all our teams, maybe bar one or two have achieved that cap, so we’re looking pretty good.