By Ryan Long.
A young Berwick senior group set their sights on the 2024 campaign, their fourth year in the league, while the club celebrates the return of their Senior Women’s program.
The Senior Men are looking to build off the 2023 season with Senior Coach Clint Evans re-signing in the back half of last season, after some strong improvement from the senior group.
Evans was impressed with what he saw of the group in patches of the year, matching it with some of the best teams in the league.
“We matched it with a lot of the sides,” Evans said.
“We probably couldn’t hold it for four quarters, had lapses for 15 minutes where sides got a run on us.”
The club made some major strides forward in 2023, pulling off some of their biggest scalps yet since joining the EFNL. Berwick defeated eventual Grand Finalists Vermont in a memorable road trip in the opening round of the season, as well as defeating the reigning premiers Noble Park in the second time they met for the year.
In other contests against strong opponents, a younger Wickers side struggled to compete against the more experienced players of the competition.
“The sides we come up against, their players who are really good like their ex-VFL players, 26-27, they just take charge,”
“We probably haven’t got that yet, haven’t got that calibre of players yet and that’s what hurt us in those 15-minute patches.”
It’s set to be an even younger group that heads into the 2024 season with the likes of Harrison Money moving on.
The improvement is set to come from within, Berwick’s Under 19’s side coming off a very strong year, finishing up as Runner Up’s in the Premier U19.5 Grand Final.
“There will be a few guys that come through,”
“We’ve lost a fair few older guys so there’s a bit of a changing of the guard at the footy club which is a good thing, huge opportunities where they might not have got it,”
“Even last year we put games into guys who maybe weren’t ready but hopefully that keeps them in good stead for this year.”
With that, the Wickers will enter the year with a few changes in game plans for their younger senior squad.
“We’ve got to kick higher scores, in saying that, we’ve lost a fair calibre of our forward line,”
“It’s going to be a whole new gameplan for us this year, we’ve got to change it up a bit because we’re young, we need to have quick ball movement because we’re not going to be overly big,”
“What we have coming through in our junior ranks will hold us in good stead.”
The club have done a fantastic job transitioning into the league since their debut game against Noble Park at Edwin Flack Reserve back in 2021.
Going through mammoth list changes and turnovers, the club have managed to consolidate their position at the top level of the EFNL.
Evans has been proud of the club for holding their position in the Premier Division while navigating a new list but also acknowledged their ambitions of becoming a future contender in the same division.
“From when we started to now, we’ve only got four or five guys left,” Evans said.
“It’s all changed with the young kids coming up so for us to nearly turn over a full list and stay in premier has been fantastic, but in saying that, we don’t want to stay in premier and finish bottom two, we want to start competing, that’s the biggest thing,”
“It’s alright being there but you don’t want to be smashed every week.”
The Wickers open their 2024 season with a Round One clash against the reigning premiers, Rowville at Seebeck Oval.
For the first time since 2021, Berwick will also field a senior women’s team in the Deakin University Senior Women’s competition.
With 13 players coming up from Berwick’s Under 18 Girls side, the club were eager to keep them at Berwick and restart the Senior Women’s program off the back of their transition from junior football.
The club made the announcement at the end of last year that former SBL Wolves Senior Coach Simon Mehegan would commence as Berwick’s new senior women’s coach in 2024.
Mehegan has plenty of history within the league, a playing career at The Basin and having coached over 300 games over 33 years.
“I went and met the club, the committee, and a few people within the junior club as well, I liked what I saw,” Mehegan said.
“Went down to the Under 18s training for their last session last year and was really impressed with the attitude of the girls, they looked like they were there to have fun and a good time,”
“It looked really exciting and the fact that they had a good junior girls program, it was something to be excited about over the next three, four, five years.”
The club managed to retain those Under 18 girls along with other girls returning to football that were brought to Berwick by Simon Mehegan, junior girls he had coached previously.
“Really good, talented junior players that have gone through the stingrays program that has decided after quite an intense program, gave it away for a year or two,”
“Courtney Siwes is one, she’s come back, a very exciting midfielder that’s only 19,”
“Georgia Malkoun, she won five leagues best and fairest’s as a junior girl, she’s come back and hasn’t missed a training.”
Since forming the first senior women’s team at Berwick in 2021, the key priorities over the first few months of training have been to consolidate the team and bring them together to get to know one another.
It’s so far been a great success, with numbers over the pre-season remaining strong ahead of their first clash of the season.
“The numbers have been good, we’ve been getting 18-19 senior players at training each week, we’ve also been fortunate to have the Under 18s also training with the seniors for the whole year,”
“We’ve put our game plan in place where we’ve got a style of game we want to play, the girls are all across that and are aware of that now, they’ve seen it on the training track, in a couple of meetings,”
“The buy-in has been absolutely fantastic, it’s a very exciting group.”
The uniqueness of Berwick’s home ground, Edwin Flack Reserve, will prove to be a great advantage for the senior women’s side in 2024.
One of the biggest ground dimensions in the entire league, it’s set to be a tough road trip for opposition teams in Division Two.
“We want to be known as the hardest team to score against,” Mehegan said.
“We’re going to use Edwin Flack as a home-ground advantage because girls don’t usually play on a ground like Edwin Flack.”
Similar to the Senior Men’s Wickers side, Berwick is coming back into the competition as one of the youngest teams in the league.
Returning to the competition, the sole number one focus for Mehegan and Berwick is to rebuild the senior program and set the club up for not just the 2024 season but 2025 and beyond.
“Out of the 26 (players), the top age is only 21 and 18 of them are only 18 so there is no emphasis on what we want to achieve as in finals, we’ll just take that along in our strides as it comes,”
“Absolutely the focus is to consolidate the team and bond this team together so that this team stays together for the next year 2025,”
“We know there’s 11 or 12 under 18s that will come into senior football next year,”
“Our aim is basically to have 40 players under the age of 22 by the time that comes.”
Similar to many of the best senior women’s programs in the league, the development and pathway of the junior program is one of their main areas for success.
Mehegan believes this will hold Berwick in good stead for the long-term future, creating a positive culture at the club.
“If you don’t have a junior girls program of feeding into the seniors, it’s hard to plan, you’re almost got to hope,”
“It’s always going to be hard to get players out of another club so to have that 11 or 12 juniors coming through to the seniors each year,”
“That gives you a really big advantage in your growth of numbers.”
