By Ryan Long
It’s an exciting time to be a Basin Bear, with the clubs’ men’s and women’s teams coming off very strong 2021 campaigns.
After a disappointing season in 2019, the men’s side were back to their best, finishing the year well entrenched inside the top four, winning nine of their 12 matches.
With one of the most promising young lists in the competition, the Bears have become one of the biggest threats to take out this year’s Division Two premiership.
Last year’s season coming to a premature end meant that The Basin was one of the many unlucky teams to miss out on a chance at playing in finals footy in September.
Senior Coach Justin Stanton acknowledged the impact that had on the club who were having their best season since 2015.
“It was certainly disappointing since our goal at the start of the year was to play finals and then challenge ourselves against the other finalists,” Stanton said.
“It left a bit of a flat feeling in the playing group’s stomach due to the fact that they played some pretty good football at times during the year.”
Unlike previous years for the senior side, the off-season has been handled differently in terms of training with a change of focus when they returned from the break.
“Our key focus was to do things different than what we’ve previously done with two years interruptions,” said Stanton.
“Traditionally we return mid-November like everyone else however this year, we re-connected with the group to make sure their health and welfare were in order, but we didn’t worry about football until mid-January,
“As a result of that, we’ve got a young, healthy, vibrant list who have set themselves a number of goals this year.”
The plethora of talented youth that the Bears have is something that has Stanton metaphorically drooling over.
“My goal when I took over was to turn the club upside down and build a list that was going to be able to have sustained success.”
“Out of our top 30 players, we’ve probably got the best part of 20 of them that are 21-22 or under.
“We’ve got two players that have done a pre-season with North Melbourne VFL this year in Nick Hallo and Jackson Drake, so that’s really exciting to have both those at a superior level of pre-season training.”
Just twice did an opposition side kick ten or more goals against The Basin last year, with the Bears finishing the second-best defence in the league.
The Bears haven’t hidden from any expectations.
They were confident heading into last year that they could perform well enough to contend for a finals spot and their standards will not drop in 2022.
“We haven’t shied away from that the goal at the start of the year is to play finals and make the top five,
“From within that, the guys have set themselves goals where we want to go deep into the finals.”
The Basin women’s development program has also taken some very positive steps forward.
The girls had an almost perfect season in 2021, finishing second on the ladder, winning nine out 10 matches before the season was suspended.
This year, the club is very close to forming a second team with numbers beginning to ramp up at training, just short of 40.
Senior Coach Matt Bailey is hoping the Bears will be able to secure the extra numbers to form the second women’s team.
“That took its toll last year, not being able to get those two sides up, we obviously put a lot of time and effort into doing that and coming into late February, we realised it wasn’t going to take off,
“We’ve really thrown all our eggs into that basket again this year into getting those teams up and running.
“When we did have them back in 2018, the vibe was fantastic and the whole group picks up when you’ve got those kinds of numbers.”
Unfortunately for the Bears, they’ve lost a few key names ahead of the 2022 season, meaning it will be a new-look side when they run out in round one.
“We’ve lost a lot of that talent unfortunately this year, just another causality with covid I think where girls decide to do other things with their time,
“At the moment, we’re looking at a lot of those girls who finished in our top six of our best and fairest, there’s probably three or four of those who have gone elsewhere or dropped footy completely.”
The silver lining to those losses is that it gives some of the other girls more of an opportunity to develop their game further.
Bailey highlighted some key players that have started to take their game to new levels last year.
“Brooke Priest took out our club best and fairest last year, which is fantastic for an original girl, right from the start to take it out, realise they are thriving, and they are progressing in a football sense.”
“Monica Van Tilburg is another one who was out on the other wing.
“She had an unbelievable year, once again the pace she has, it’s what we aimed to do last year, pull teams apart outside on the wing, hopefully, if we can keep that pace up, we may be able to do that again.”
The side has spent a lot of time focusing on the strength of their defence and adapting to each opponent.
“We base our progress and support from that backline, it’s been a strong point for us across that half back line with a lot of our best players in place there, so it’s important for us to focus on that again.
“What we did focus on more is being able to adjust to other teams who may be dominating at different times of the game, that would be the big one for us,
“In that last game against Whitehorse, we found ourselves down by 20 points at quarter-time and to be able to drag that deficit back and be able to win by able to win by 20 points was huge for us.
“Just to be able to take something away from that and to realise that we can turn a game around, that’s one big point I would like to drag into this year.”