By Matt Fotia
2018 saw Scoresby go close to premiership glory. 2019 saw them well off the pace.
So far 2020 is looking up, with club favourite Kristian Bardsley back at the helm as the Magpies get ready to reset.
Bardsley, who played 58 games for North Melbourne and St Kilda as well as masterminding the Magpies 2006 Division Two Premiership, got the urge to re-enter the coaching game last season whilst working under Joel Perry at Upper Ferntree Gully.
When the Scoresby job became available it seemed too good to be true.
“I was helping out Joel Perry last year and was more or less full time by the end of the season and felt the urge to get back into coaching, the opportunity popped up at Scoresby and things just aligned,” said Bardsley.
Scoresby struggled in 2019 despite a strong 2018. Photo – Field of View Sports Photography
His first mission was to find out what went wrong in 2019.
His second mission – to make sure everyone forgets about it and moves on.
“I wanted to get a feel from the players on what actually happened in 2019, to go from playing in a preliminary final the year before to getting relegated is a massive change,”
“No one could really answer why and after that it was just about getting everybody and looking forward rather than looking back, working on what we’ve got, what we haven’t got, what we need to do and getting everyone back into the mindset of wanting to be there, wanting to improve and having that enjoyment for footy.”
Looking forward seemed to be working with the Magpies getting strong numbers across the entire pre-season, allowing Bardsley to focus on developing a game plan that will help the Magpies in 2020 and beyond.
“I didn’t see many of their games last year so I didn’t look at what they’d done, but what I have done is try to simplify things and work on a game-style that will allow us to be competitive in this division,”
“We have a lot of young kids and good runners so we’ll play a style of football which will allow those guys to come into the play and really teach them what we need them to do in all scenarios – defensive or offensive – and make sure they’re not pigeon holed.”
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Like all clubs Scoresby are trying to navigate their way through the current coronavirus pandemic as best they can, with the players health at the forefront of their minds.
Bardsley has steered clear of giving out training programs, fearing that they could lead to players ignoring social distancing instructions which would lead to a further delay of the season.
“We haven’t put anything official in place because – and this is the problem with society at the moment – you’ve give people an inch and they’ll take a mile and we need to keep people away from each other,”
“With the group being so young it’s very hard to give them direction about what’s going on and to be honest we can’t give them too much direction because we don’t want people doing things in groups,”
“So it’s been about touching base with each other and seeing how they’re going.”
