By Christopher Kourtis.
It’s a new dawn for East Burwood as the club will take on 2025 with a new senior coach.
Despite the new start, it’s a familiar feeling at East Burwood Reserve as the club welcomes its fourth senior head coach in the last four years.
Rams fans will be filled with hope ahead of the new season, as their hope lies in of our their own. Former East Burwood junior, senior player and senior captain Kyle Dove has hung up the boots and will take the reigns of the club he’s spent his life at.
“It’s just been really exciting to work with players that obviously I’m very familiar with and have spent time playing with,” said Dove, when asked about the transition process.
The first-time head coach will work with many of his former teammates as he looks to take East Burwood further up the ladder in 2025. Among these are Lachy Jose (seven times in best) and Marcus Young (twelve goals), who were major contributors in 2024.
One teammate Dove will be without, however, is Matthew Mariani, as last season’s leading goal kicker has returned to Templestowe over the off-season.
Dove is insistent that Mariani’s departure is an exception to the norm.
“The most pleasing thing is being able to hold onto our core,” said Dove. “We’ve only lost a couple players… we’ve been able to retain probably 95% of our list.”
East Burwood struggled with consistency last season, finishing just two places off the bottom of the table. Head coach Dove is looking to take some strides in the off-season but understands that too much change is not always a good thing.
“It’s important not to make massive overriding changes,” said Dove. “We’ve obviously built this year around where we saw a few patches in our game last year.
“[The changes] have been pretty minor in terms of introducing little nuances in our game that I think will hold us in really good stead.
“We’re going to play a really exciting brand of footy.”
The Rams had to wait until Round 5 to pick up their first win in 2024. Ahead of the upcoming season, those at East Burwood Reserve are adamant on opening their account much earlier on this time around.
“We’ve already spoken about wanting to hit Round 1 in full stride,” said coach Dove. “Really honing in on our craft and knowing our role and being able to execute… we don’t want to be hitting Round 1 and still be finding out a little bit about how we want to play and our brand.”
East Burwood will travel to Central Reserve in Round One to take on Waverley Blues.