A collective effort will drive forward East Ringwood’s two senior sides in season 2021, with the former Eastern Football Netball League powerhouse well placed to make a charge for a premiership on all fronts.
The Kangaroo’s showed promising signs in season 2019, as they finished mere percentage points short of a Division One finals berth, tied with Park Orchards and Upper Ferntree Gully on eight wins.
They carried some of their late season momentum into the off-season by announcing the signing of former South Croydon Premiership player and Coburg assistant coach Ben Osborne as senior coach and prior to the cancellation of the 2020 season, East Ringwood look well set to take the next step on field.
12 months on and Osborne believes the club is in a better place than it was last year following some handy inclusions, including South Croydon defender Dale Walker and former Eastern Ranges ball carrier Mitchell Keedle, but have still felt the pain of a year off football.
“It’s hard to tell for sure, because we’re probably going to have a couple of experienced blokes call time, but picking up Walks (Dale Walker) is huge for us and Josh Weightman wasn’t a lock last year and (he) is as fit as I’ve seen him,”
“We’ve had a couple go out and a couple come onto to the list, but I think we’re better off with some younger guys having another year to mature and grow into their bodies, but on the flip side it’s going to be hard to replace blokes like Rents (legendary club ruckman Andrew Renton).”
East Ringwood were the division’s sixth ranked side for points scored in 2019, with James Belo’s 20 goals the best of the bunch.
The club’s new tactician trusts that his talented pool of midfielders will be able to provide enough scoring power in 2021 when spending time in the forward half of the ground.
“We’ve got a lot of depth in the midfield, and there a couple of blokes who if they played pre-dominantly forward, they’d kick us 30-40 goals a year, so I suppose it depends on how our depth is going through the midfield,”
“But it’ll be a collective because we don’t have – at this stage – an out and out gun key forward.”
That doesn’t mean there won’t be any tall timber in the forward half for East.
“We’ve got some really exciting youngsters like Benny Hickleton, but he’s still an unknown in terms of how quickly he can develop, I think he can kick some goals for us, but I’m not expecting the world from him yet, he’s a young bloke who’s played a handful of senior games,”
“So, with our depth in the backline, we can use a couple of our swingmen who can go forward for us if we need more keys, but other than that there will be a lot of midfield-forwards causing the damage.”
The flexibility of Osborne’s troops is something that will boost East Ringwood’s flag aspirations, but the ex-Dog knows that you need more than a talented list to achieve the ultimate glory in a highly contested division.
“Knox went down with six wins last year, the competition is so close that injuries and luck can play a big part in how our season shapes up,”
“We’ve still got Chris Cerni playing and he’s really driving our club forward, and he’s closer to the end of his career then the start and I know the players respect him so much that they’ll be doing as much as they can this year.”
Women’s coach Peter Baker has become part of the furniture at East Ringwood and heading into his fourth year involved in the women’s program, Baker is anxious to see how much the year off sport will hamper the program’s momentum.
“When we first went into lockdown we kept very busy and engaged, but the further it went on, the less connected we stayed, it just got more and more difficult,”
“(But) We’re up and training now and we’ve got majority of the girls back one deck, but we’re just not sure how many are still deciding (about whether to play in 2021) and so on,”
“We’ve (also) had some good players who have decided not to come back in 2021.”
The Roo’s came to the conclusion that a senior women’s side was a requirement after a number of talented junior girls continued to leave the club for good following their junior years and they have now put in place the foundations to build a strong and stable female system.
“We first decided to put a women’s team together because we had really good junior girls,”
“They’d go through the club and then after their Under 16 year they would just leave the club, and we just said this is crazy,”
“So, we put a senior women’s team in, and the atmosphere and vibe were fantastic, and we had a really good flow of players coming into the side,”
“Our plan is that the girls start in the Under 10’s and Under 12’s and go all the way through to the Seniors, just like the boys do, because otherwise you’ll be trying to recruit girls from other clubs and that just doesn’t work.”
Such is the success of East Ringwood’s women’s program that the club will be entering a Veterans side for the first time in season 2021, with a number of senior players eligible for the side.
But those players would rather ply their trade in Baker’s senior side and help develop the next generation of East Ringwood players, which fits perfectly with Baker’s modius operandi.
“The girls that are more advanced really love helping the other girls learn and the beginners absolutely love it,”
“We’re not here to win premierships, we’re here to enjoy and develop and if the girls are enjoying themselves, they’ll get better at it and if they get better, we’ll obviously become a better team.”
Baker believes that the strength of the women’s program has benefited the club on the whole enormously.
“It’s certainly made our club stronger,”
“A number of the girls have been involved on the committee and volunteering and that will continue to grow.”
East Ringwood take on Croydon at home to kick off their 2021 Division One season, whilst the Women’s Fixture was TBC at time of writing.