By Jared Beanland.
After finally snapping a long losing streak in 2021, the improvement continued for the Panthers in season 2022.
Chirnside Park’s season started strongly winning 7 of their first 8 matches. A 179 demolishing at the hands of Silvan punctuated a change for the Panthers, however, and the season was never quite back to where they had started. They dropped games against Forest Hill and Surrey Park – two teams they had beaten previously in the year.
Despite this, they were still able to secure a finals appearance, and rounded out their year by winning the elimination final against Kilsyth. The next week would see them bow out of the Division 4 finals race after being thumped by the rampaging Surrey Park.
2023 will be a year of consolidating that form the boys from Kimberley Drive Reserve had shown earlier on last season. Recruits such as Ryan Mitchell from the Yarra Junction, and Jayden Battaglene from Powelltown, botth in the Outer Eastern Football League look to bolster the team’s depth.
Coming out of the on-field team, and picking up the mantle of assistant coach will be power full forward of many years, Daniel Beddome. Beddome kicked 41 goals in his last season for the Panthers, so leaves a large hole in the forward line.
Fortunately for senior coach Dave Newlands and co, this hole will be filled by none other than Leigh Oddermatt.
Coming across from South Belgrave, Odermatt is in the twilight of his career, however will still have a lot to offer, especially in a Division 4 where one big key forward can prove all the difference in close matches.
The five-time premiership player in the EFNL had a 2022 season hampered by injury, yet still managed to kick 21 goals from 11 games amongst an all star line-up in the Saints’ forward line. He comes to Chirnside Park with bags of experience, and will be hoping to be the key to the Panthers unlocking their second finals berth in two years.
Much of last season Chirnside Park was the second best team in the competition, only under the dominant Silvan.
While Surrey Park overtook that second place mantle in the back half of the 2022, Chirnside Park will be looking to take advantage of the fact Silvan have progressed into Division 3, and make the top seed their own.
Chirnside Park will also be fielding a women’s team once more this season, competing in Division 1 of the women’s competition.
Manning the helm once again will be senior women’s coach Dave Stewart. Despite a drop in form on previous seasons, Stewart still has a positive outlook on last year for the team.
“The club as a whole did very well (in 2022); a finals run for the mens, and a lot of the juniors as well. Ourselves, we ended up 4 points out of the finals after losing quite a few players that we had from the previous years, so I think we gelled together quite well, and started to take off a little bit towards the end of the year.”
Stewart has been casting the recruiting net wide, and from the performance in the practise match against Rowville, seems to have made some finds.
“We’ve definitely had a couple of very good recruits come through. I think there’s around 5 girls who’ve come down to the club and have done very well.
“We had a practise match against Rowville last week, and all of them performed very well. There’s a couple of girls there who have never played a game of football before, and they did well. We were able to give them some time of the field, and I’m pretty sure they all enjoyed it quite a lot.”
“A couple of the young recruits will do well in the midfield I think. Lisa Button is someone who leaps to mind and played a very good game out of the centre in the practise match.
“Nat Matilda and Layla Edsell have made their way to the club, and performed very well, and I’m looking forward to having a great season from all of them.”
Preseason numbers on the park always being an important factor in the hunt for a good start to a season, things are looking positive for the girls at Kimberley Drive.
“I think from years gone by, the numbers have definitely improved this year. We’re getting some good numbers to training, we’ve been managing to pull a good amount of girls.
“Which means we can set up some good drills, not just working on the skills all the time. And also means we can get some input from some of the girls about what they want to work on.”
Mixing the senior girls and mens teams has been an important factor at the start of 2023, driving the improvement even further. Stewart mentions that this is continuation of practices from previous seasons.
“Up to last year we started training once every couple of weeks we’d do the Thursday warm-up with the senior boys, which worked really well.
“The senior coach (Dave Newlands) has been very good with his time with the girls as well.”
“We’ve also had the captain of the senior footy team, Scott (Dwyer), who’s been very good coming down to our training, and to the start of matches, and interacts with the girls quite well before the game.
“He’s been really, really good.”
The club culture amongst the girls being strong, Stewart asserts that, while finals are always the goal, it’s more important for him to provide an enriching experience for those that play under him. This will be no different for season 2023.
“I suppose the expectation would be for us to make finals, but the first initial thought is that we want to make sure everybody has a lot of fun playing. It’s a great game to be involved in, they’ve worked really hard, we’ve worked on a lot of skills.
“As I keep saying to them, the more they practise those skills, it’s so much better to have the pill in your hand on the field when you know what the hell to do with it.
“So if we get them to smile on the field, off the field, or on their way to the field, and they’re still smiling when they come back off, win, lose, or draw, then we’ve probably had a win for everyone.”