40 DAYS TO GO | EFL Media will be previewing each club ahead of the 2018 season with the #InFocus2018 series, all thanks to Yarra Valley Water & Choose Tap.
By: Brett Beston
Twitter: @Brett_Beston
Last season’s grand final loss won’t by the driving force for the Doncaster East Lions heading into season 2018.
Coach Steve Buckle says the team moved on quickly after the 16-point loss to Knox in last year’s decider and hasn’t dwelt on the defeat in the pre-season.
“We haven’t really spoken about it (the grand final) – I gave the boys some feedback at the end of last season and at our presentation night, that before we came back to pre-season every player was expected to watch the game back and learn from it,” he said.
“I think the boys understood that it was there for us to take and we missed our opportunity – I think that’s been fire in the belly enough.
“I don’t think you need any other motivation than losing one to know how it feels.
“We might recall it a few times throughout the year in certain situations but it hasn’t really come up at all.
“We’ve just gone into the year worrying about ourselves and we know if we do everything right and execute our game plan properly that we should go close again.”
One positive for Buckle and the Lions has been the minimal player loss along with a couple of handy inclusions, including ex-Carlton defender Simon White (pictured) who played 87 games for the club.
PICTURE: AFL Photos
“Nathan Batsanis has gone to Xavier which is a kind of a loss but not a huge one; he probably didn’t have the impact we were hoping last year,” Buckle said.
“I think he found the transition a bit difficult coming from the VFL to local footy. We’ll miss him, he’s a quality on-baller but we think we’ve got the cattle to replace him.
“Joel Roos has moved on but he hasn’t played for us for a couple of years, and Nathan Mill has gone to Donvale.
“We’ve picked up Simon White, ex-Carlton – we don’t know where we will play him yet.
“He’s been training a bit with the forwards and the backs as well so it gives us the option to play him in either role, to swing him depending on where we need him for certain match-ups.
“He’s been great for the group, he’s another coach really.
“We’ve also got Hisham Kerbatieh an on-baller (and) half forward who’s VFL listed with Coburg so we don’t expect to have him very often, maybe when Coburg has a bye.
“He’s a quality player but we may only get him for three or four games.”
Buckle expects a host of names to further improve on 2017.
“We expect guys like Brock (McLean) to improve on last year – he was probably getting a bit of a feel for EFL footy,” Buckle said.
“Jimmy Locke, Jack Sholakis and Jack Martin should all have great years.
“Jack (Martin) has won our last two best and fairest awards. Jarryd Lowther is likely to spend a lot more time in the midfield, so there’ll be quite a few positional changes which will hopefully help develop some of the young guys.”
There’s also some depth to draw on when the inevitable injuries or form loss strikes.
“We played four to six 17-year-olds last year and we had a 17-year-old in our grand final team, Kristian Trkulja so we will be expecting more out of him,” Buckle said.
“We have a couple of boys that we picked up from Warrandyte, James and Tom Appleby.
“James is only 21 and he won Warrandyte’s best and fairest last year with Tom second even after missing around 10 games.
“We’re a pretty young list, but most of the young guys will be hopefully playing the majority but not all of the year in the seniors, so we’ll see how they stack up.”
As it was last year, Doncaster East will again be one of the hunted sides and widely-favoured to lift the silverware at season’s end.
The Lions have the belief that this might be their year.
“It’s not so much about goals, rather expectation – we expect a lot from our group, we’ve been banging on the door for three years now so we’re looking for that improvement to continue and hopefully put us in a position where we can have another crack at it (a premiership),” Buckle said.
“We’ll see how we go but we believe we should be there at the pointy end of the season again.”
Lions faithful can catch their side in three practice games with the first of those against Rowville this weekend, followed by a clash with MPNFL side Seaford on March 17 and a week later against NFL side Greensborough. You can check the club’s website or Facebook page for full details.
Doncaster East will travel to Heights Reserve to face Mooroolbark on Saturday April 7 in Round 1.
