South Croydon won’t be fading into the background in 2021, with the 2017 Division One Premier and 2019 Division One (Women’s) Premier ready to stamp its authority on the competition.
The men’s outfit will be taking instructions from a new voice in 2021, with East Ringwood legend Marcus Buzaglo in the hot seat, following the departure of 2018 and 2019 club coach Luke McCormick’s departure in recent times.
Buzaglo, who had coached East Ringwood for almost six years was set to be a senior assistant under McCormick in 2020, is excited by this unexpected opportunity.
“Having a year off was a good thing and I was geared up to help Luke (McCormick) this year and excited to be working with him,”
“I had to think about it a little bit (the job), but once we started training and I got some feedback from the group – a pretty special group of players – it made me really keen to get back into it again (coaching).”
Buzaglo believes that McCormick has left the playing group in a perfect position for a successful changeover.
“You’re always learning in football, both playing and coaching, and you know Luke had the group really well set up, so the transition has been really seamless,”
“He’s left the club and the playing list in a really good position, it’s a strong and experienced group and we haven’t had time to look back we’ve had to move on from it pretty quick,”
“We just need to make sure we’re ready for round one.”
To many outsiders, this South Croydon squad may be at the end of their tenure, with a number of star players entering the twilight of their careers, but Buzaglo is adamant that there is room for growth across the board.
We want to get improvement in every area, some guys on our list have been really good players for a long period of time, but I want them to get better – even a Dano King who’s achieved so much, I want him to have his best year of his career,”
“Some of the younger blokes will get opportunities this year, so we’ll get some real improvement there and it’s part of my job and the other coaches’ jobs to develop those guys,”
Pleasingly from our point of view is that when I turn up to training on a Monday and Wednesday Night there’s 30 plus Under 19’s on the track.”
The Dogs have recruited strongly in recent years and had headlined the transfer period in the build up to 2020 by signing Woori Yallock trio Jordan Williams, Ben Monkhorst and Zach Monkhorst, with the latter expected to play a huge role as the club’s ruckman.
But the Dogs are once again on the hunt for a big man, with both Monkhorst boys set to return to Woori Yallock for season 2021.
“We knew early about Benny, but Zach let us know later – just after Christmas – which makes it hard to fill that number one ruckman spot, Maxy King is a pretty good ruckman but that also takes away an option down forward,”
“So, we’re looking to find someone to fill that spot, but it’s not the end of the world if we don’t, we’ll try a few different things, but it might create opportunities for guys.”
Despite some setbacks and interruptions to their preparation for the year ahead, Buzaglo believes the club is still well and truly inside the ‘Premiership Window’.
“Once you win a premiership, you want to keep winning them,”
“We’re – this club – has spent a lot of time getting the club into a position where we’re in the top echelon of teams in Premier Division,”
“The expectation is that we contend again this year.”
Speaking of Premiership Windows, South Croydon’s women’s side found themselves smack bang in the middle of one in 2019, as the female pups took out the Division One flag, knocking off The Basin in the decider.
PHOTO CREDIT: South Croydon Football Club
They were set to develop further in 2020 under coach Simon Hammersley, but like many their 2020 plans were scuppered, despite the best of efforts to maintain momentum.
“We did a lot early in the lockdowns with contact groups that they would train together in remotely, to make sure they were keeping in touch,”
“But after the second lockdown we gave it a real rest until about November, when we got training going again,”
“It’s been a challenge because 2020 affected everyone differently, so we’ve still got a good core of players who are keen and some others who have been a bit harder to get motivated.”
The Dogs went back to square one when they were finally able to reconvene and have slowly built towards developing the more advanced side of their game.
“We were really focusing on the structural side of the game when the whole pandemic took off last year, so when we came back in November, we started back on the core skills and kept that focus until the start of February, and now we’re coming back into that structural stuff now,”
“Overall, the understanding has been really good and it’s starting to become embedded in, but with some changes to the playing group there are some who came into this part of the pre-season completely blind.”
The group won’t be completely blind when it comes to their relationships with one another, after a very successful pre-season camp at Cape Patterson in late February.
Such was the success of the camp, Hammersely has gone from camp nay-sayer, to camp advocate.
“The camp was really good,”
“As a player I was never really avid believer of the merits of the pre-season camp, probably because of all the running involved, but as a coach what that did for our group was incredible,”
“It was a really great way to get them to work together as a group and bond as a unit again,”
“They’ve come out of it a stronger group than what they were heading in.”
2020 saw the Dogs take stock on where their female program was at and now they’re raring to go ahead of season 2021 and are confident in their abilities.
“We’re looking really good,”
“From late Jan(uary) onwards it’s been ramping up and we’re close to where we need to be,”
“It’s a very solid group, a close group and a skilled group, so as a group we’re looking pretty good.”
South Croydon host Doncaster on the 17th of April to start their Premier Division campaign, whilst the Women’s fixture was yet to be released at time of writing.