By Blake Tennant.
It’s a new era for the Coldstream Senior Men’s outfit this year with Chad Rogers departing the Cougars as head coach at the end of the 2023 season.
Coldstream has brought in a a star player with plenty of premiership experience, Jarrod Bayliss as a Playing Coach for season 2024.
Bayliss a no stranger in the EFNL, having previously won a Premiership with Park Orchards in season 2017, and more recently, winning back-to-back premierships with Powelltown in the AFL Outer East.
Bayliss said, “ The reason why I chose Coldstream to coach is just the relationships I built 21 years ago with the people around the club, it always feels nice to build connections that were a part of the last senior premiership from Coldstream.”
Bayliss expectations are to “ Play finals football, and create a winning culture within the group, really to improve from last year and return to finals footy.”
A certain player whose having a really good pre-season is Jeremy Conte.
Bayliss said “Jeremy’s attributes have been terrific, really showing promising signs during practice matches,”
“But the whole team is very hungry and are keen for the season to start and are ready.”
Bayliss stated, “ We want to pride ourselves on defence this year, we want to be a hard team to score against. We want to be very versatile on this in the season.”
Darcy Fritsch will be a full-time player in season 2024 after a stint playing VFL for Northern Bullants last season.
A couple of key recruits for Coldstream include Brock Castree, a five-time premiership player.
“He has been around the traps a lot, came from Powelltown and has a good football brain, one of the best players I’ve played with in local level.”
Gary Conyers will also be playing for the Cougars in season 2024, a North Ringwood product who also played with Bayliss at Powelltown.
Coldstream opens up their 2024 season campaign against Oakleigh District at Princes Highway Reserve on April 6th.
The Coldstream senior women’s team are also in for a mammoth season, promoted into Division Three in the Deakin University Senior Women’s this season after unfortunately going out in the preliminary final against the runner-up from last year, Mitcham.
Coldstream Senior Coach Matt Coghlan says the group is excited about the challenge ahead.
“The girls are anticipating a new season with excitement, the balance between the senior players of our group and of new players coming across has been awesome,” Coghlan said.
“Moving up to division 3 will have some challenges but the girls are ready for this opportunity, our leaders will be ready for this challenge.”
A couple of standouts during the pre-season that Coghlan has stated include two strong leaders in the side.
“Hannah Chappell and Jessie Mcllrath will be in our leadership group this year and they have been outstanding this season, both players have driven the group from early November till now really excited to see how they go this year.”
Coldstream Senior Women open their season against reigning premier Mooroolbark with both teams coming up from Division 4, the match will be played at Halley Supple Reserve, Coldstream on April 20th.
