The Beaconsfield Football Club is building towards something big in season 2023, their second-ever season in the Eastern Football Netball League
The Eagles were the new kids on the block last year, joining the EFNL from the Outer East competition.
A legend of the competition, Mick Fogarty will continue as senior coach this year, taking plenty out of the side’s 6-12 record last year.
“If you’re off five per cent, if you lapse in concentration for a quarter, the opposition can get on top of you,” Fogarty said.
“Our biggest factor going in this year is taking in the learnings from last year, which is simply staying in the game for four quarters.”
Like many of the Division One clubs that missed out on a finals spot in season 2022, Beaconsfield’s best stacked up with the top contenders.
For Fogarty, there’s been a strong focus on how to prevent damage on the scoreboard when opposition sides get a hold of the game.
“The opposition at some stage like they did last year, they’re going to get a hold of you and it’s just making sure that the momentum the oppo get on you is sustainable and it’s not too hurtful on the scoreboard.
“We’ve been practicing a lot of how we stay in the moment, stay in the game when the opposition does have momentum.”
Fogarty is hopeful the improvement of the side in season 2023 will come from the likes of their younger talent with another year of football under their belts.
“The improvement and development of our younger kids, Sam Mackinder, Lachy Valentine, josh mounter, Declan Curran, Ethan Harris, just to name a few, that’s where the improvement’s going to come from.
“These guys will be really good senior EFNL senior footballers in the next couple of years.”
The way they’ve handled themselves over the off-season has Fogarty feeling very positive about the future of the club.
“Over pre-season, those guys have worked really hard to understand what they need to do to get to the next level.
“Not only just making division one football but impacting games, those guys have certainly been terrific in their approach and the way they’ve handled pre-season.”
In their opening round of the 2023 season, Beaconsfield were defeated by last year’s Preliminary Finalists, Mitcham by 23 points.
There’s still plenty to take out of the loss, especially their dominant second quarter where the Eagles kicked six majors.
“To kick six goals in the second quarter against one of the teams to beat was a terrible reward for our guys understanding the way we need to play and not just be competitive like we were last year but to go to the next step.
“Mitcham just showed their class in that third quarter, won the contested ball, won all their one on one’s all over the ground, really put so much pressure on our defence.
“We take lessons on that but overall, it was a pleasing performance game for us against one of the teams to beat.”
Whether the results go their way or not when the club plays the likes of a Mitcham, Fogarty is hoping the club will be recognised as one of the harder teams to come up against in the 2023 season, no matter where they play.
“No matter home or away, we want to be hard to play against.
“We want opposition to walk away regardless of the result to know we’ve had a tough game today.
Beaconsfield take on Bayswater this Saturday with hopes to win their first game of the season.
Fogarty and the Eagles learnt a couple of key things from the last time the sides met up which they hope they can turn around.
“Stopping the influence of Joel Galvin, that’s the key.
“When we played them out at ‘Beacy’ last year, we were five goals up at quarter time and Galvin went into the ruck and really picked them all up and they got themselves back in the game.
“He’s one we really need to keep in check.”
There’s a lot of pressure with the addition of double relegation on Division One clubs this year in what’s still a very even competition.
With the young and developing talent at the Eagles, Fogarty knows that the club will be in a great position for the future once they consolidate their spot.
“We just want to consolidate and understand that relegation, that two teams go down, Division One football is where we want to stay.
“This Beaconsfield footy club, mark my words, over the next couple of years is going to be a really good side and be a powerful side in division one.”
The club is certainly looking to emphasise all their attention on their first block of games rather than looking too far into the future.
“We won six games last year, lost four by ten points or under. A bit of luck our way like Collingwood had last year, we’d play finals.”
“Bottom line is, we didn’t so a pass mark for us is to make sure we win more than six games and we’ll reassess mid-year how it’s looking.”
Senior Women’s Coach and the President of the Beaconsfield Football Club Troy Robinson also looked at the 2023 season as a learning experience.
The side joined Division One of the Deakin University Women’s competition, finishing fourth and booking themselves in a finals spot in a very competitive division.
“First year in the competition for us was a really good learning opportunity for us,” Robinson said.
“We showed that we were really competitive for a lot of the games and for the majority of those games.”
The Eagles won four games and a draw but a couple of their losses were by small margins.
They’ll again compete in the same division with a few new clubs coming from Premier B and Division Two.
But Robinson says the club is ready for the challenge with good attendance over the off-season.
“Numbers have been really good, we’ve averaged low to mid 20’s every training session.
“The enthusiasm and energy have been great.”
One of the big highlights of last season was the form of Maddison Blackburn who took out the division best and fairest for her fantastic year.
Robinson noted just how important she is off the field as she is on it with a reasonably young group.
“She’s a fantastic leader, she’s been appointed captain for the season, and her maturity, energy, and drive at training is brilliant.
“One of the biggest things we love about her is that she’s a mentor, she’s always quick to grab someone and put them under her wing and have the conversation so her leadership has been fantastic.”
Ahead of the season, the side has been able to test out some of their younger players on the list in practice matches including a game against Kooringal.
“There were 14 players unavailable, so it was a good opportunity for some first-year footballers and a number of new girls at the club to have a run.”
“It really showed them at what level they have to play at.”
“We ran a lot of new girls that came up from the juniors which is always a big step up coming from the juniors up into the seniors.”
With a strong junior program, the club will be excited to have those juniors transitioning into senior football.
Robinson also noted a few key players he expects to have breakout seasons for the club.
“Lauree (Metclafe), I’m really expecting her to lift this year, she’s got a fair bit of x-factor about her and can play some really good football.
“Georgia Malkoun, missed the majority of the season, she was our leading forward at the start of last season, fingers crossed all of her injuries are over.
“Lauren Hojnacki is probably the other one, they’re the three big ones that I have some expectations will play a lot better brand of footy, coming off no injuries, all had really good pre-seasons, fitness is good.
The loss of Malkoun last season certainly hurt the side’s forward structure, with her return and some other changes, they’ll be a more dangerous team in their forward half.
“I’m excited with what we’re putting up forward this season.
“We struggled to score last season and a lot of our goals were manufactured more so through the midfield.”
Most of the pre-season gameplans have been focused around that area of the ground and how they can become a much more attacking team.
“A lot of the work we’ve done is on how the midfield is feeding it into the forward line, giving the forwards the best opportunity to take that mark or crumb off the ground.
“Manufacturing more forward retention, we were quite weak with forward retention last year so that’s been a big focus, our defensive pressure in our front end.”
The eight-team division again is set to be very competitive.
It does make those top four finals spots very difficult to fit into for all clubs but Robinson believes at full strength, the side is more than capable of achieving that.
“With some of the other teams we played last season, we know that if you don’t play good football, you don’t play finals.
“We’re setting an expectation that we want to play finals, we don’t want to be a team that just makes the numbers up like we did last season, we finished off poorly with injuries and performance.
“So for us, we want to be deep into finals this year, we’ve learnt enough about what we can do and we’ve got enough talent to get us there.”