By Ryan Long.
There’s a great buzz out at Templestowe as the Dockers look to return to the finals for the first time since 2017.
The club have spent a lot of time recruiting over the last two years after losing a lot of their playing list in 2020 with several key names heading back to Western Australia.
Senior Coach Anthony McGregor is coming off his first full season at the helm, where the group just missed out on a spot in the finals with their season coming to an end on the last day of the Home and Away season with a Boronia draw enough to keep the Dockers out.
Despite not making finals, the Dockers made a lot of progress from the year prior, much of which came down to who they brought into the club. With plenty of youth on the list, the club had aimed to add some experienced key veterans to the squad to lead from the front.
“We came together with what we thought we needed to recruit,” McGregor said.
“When you get someone like Nick Batsanis who has captained premierships at Doncaster East and played some decent footy and the likes of Cameron Cloke who has won endless amount of premierships and played some high level of footy for a number of years, Michael Fogarty and Toby Ryan as well, all leaders in their own right.”
This year has been much of the same with the club having multiple key inclusions to the side. These inclusions include former Division One ruckman Beau Mitchener, set to give the side a massive boost through the middle of the ground.
“I believe we have the best midfield in divvy two, very structured, very good footballers but we struggled to get first use,”
“Having Beau to mentor Bailey Watson coming through, he’s going to be enormous in his day, but he just needs some real tuition,”
“So having Beau Mitchener feeding our midfield group is going to be insane.”
Mitchener has been a dominant force in the ruck for Lilydale over the last eight years where he’s made the EFNL Team of the Year six times in over 100 games for the Falcons.
He’ll also be joined by the likes of Rowville’s Jarrod Healy and Lilydale’s Doug Wootton.
McGregor also has great expectations for the younger members of the squad who have had great pre-seasons.
“Really looking forward to seeing how we all work together with what we had already and what we’ve added,”
“But we’re still going to see a hell of a lot more growth from our local boys who have gone another level with their off-season training. Some of them have come back late last year in unbelievable knick,”
“They see what we want to achieve and they’re buying into what we need to do to achieve.”
At full strength, the Dockers have become a defensively strong side. On ten occasions across the season last year, they kept their opponents to nine goals or less.
However, McGregor believes there’s plenty of improvement that can go into their forward line structure ahead of the season to close the gap between the Dockers and the other leading contenders of the division.
“We’re a very hard side to kick a winning score against,” McGregor said.
“We have a really good defensive midfield and a really good defensive back six or seven that rotate through but one thing we do need to work on is our forward seven structure, rolling seven through the forwards, having a system we can work with rather than manufacture scores.”
Templestowe appeared to be a much more dangerous attacking side when Cameron Cloke was in the team. Due to a hamstring injury, Cloke missed eight matches in the Home and Away season but still managed to kick 36 for the season, the Dockers’ leading goal scorer.
His value on the field is just as vital to the work he does off it according to McGregor, setting a strong example for the younger players at the club.
“He is the pin, on-field and off-field,” McGregor said, “He certainly has an aura that people want to be around, he’s a ripping person, he’s a ripping leader and he’s also a good teacher,”
“On-field, he’s very, very hard to match up on, it takes two, sometimes three players to stop him, he’s that strong,”
“Having him on the field is enormous, but to have him beside myself to teach these younger fellas what it takes to go to another level is enormous, he’s a major factor.”
With the promotion of South Belgrave, the race for the Division Two premiership opens up in what’s a very even division.
McGregor believes the Dockers are more than capable of being a true finals contender, the club with a chance to be there at the pointy end of the season for the first time in six years.
“Our goal is to play finals,”
“We’re good enough to play finals, we beat some good sides last year and we beat them quite well too so definitely the goal is to play deep finals.”