By Ryan Long
There’s a new women’s team in town and the Eastern Devils are out to impress in their debut season in the EFNL.
Previously a member of the South East Women’s Football League, the Devils have moved to the Eastern Football League, joining the Premier Division competition.
The club has had a lot of success in recent times, winning back-to-back premierships in Division One in 2017 and 2018.
Senior Coach Jason Cridland is thrilled about the move, feeling excited about the challenge of joining the EFNL’s Premier Division.
“Geographically it made a lot of sense to move to the league,” Cridland said.
“It provides potentially the opportunity for us to align with a junior club and get a pathway going that way as well.”
“We see it as a really strategic opportunity for the club to expand.”
“We’ve changed, we’ve gone from a VFL club to a local club over the last few seasons and now we’ve moved to a new league.”
“The thing that’s really exciting is the quality of football that we’ll be coming up against so we’re really excited to have the opportunity to play in Premier Division and see how we stack up against all the powerful sides in the division.”
Due to the interruptions of previous years, Cridland and the rest of the coaching staff have spent just as much time in the off-season on the mental side of the sport as the physical side.
“In the off-season, we had a lot of programs put in place to keep them motivated, keep them engaged.”
“It’s been difficult with the stop-start nature of the last couple of years but we’ve got a pretty experienced bunch of players down there and they’re pretty much self-motivated and it’s been easy.”
The Devils will have quite a similar side to the group that was running out in 2021, fortunate that they haven’t lost many names while transitioning across to the new league.
In addition to that, the club has also managed to do a bit of recruiting to hopefully give them an edge this year.
“We’ve got a few additions that are VFL listed, whether or not we see them or not, we don’t know yet.”
“We’ve brought in Ashleigh Allsopp from Chirnside Park and Taylah O’Hagan from the Southern Football League, so we’ve got a couple of new ones we expect to play in our premier team.”
Cridland has identified some key differences from the opposing leagues, which have been a major focus during the pre-season this year, although apart from a pre-season game against South Croydon last year, the Eastern Devils are entering the league with a bit of uncertainty about opposition teams.
“We played 18 a side football so obviously we’re going to have to play 16 a side so it’s going to be a little different.”
“Just looking at the nature of this league, it’s probably a little bit quicker type of football than what we’ve played in the other league so a lot of emphasis on speed, repeat endurance and certainly the ability to kick and move the football in the way we want to do it.”
Cridland is hopeful that their best footy is good enough for the side to contend well but they’ll be eager to test it out in their first game of the season.
“Our main priority is that we’re fit enough and we’re playing to the way we want to play and we think that will stack up fairly well.”
“But the challenge is, when we run out against Vermont in Round One, we’ll see what it actually looks like.”
“Our expectation as a club is that we perform, and that’s no matter what league we’re in.”
