St Mary’s coach Fabian Carelli believes his side can challenge the contenders in A Plus Labour Solutions Division 2 if it can build on the momentum formed in the second half of 2019.
The Burra showed great promise in their first year in second division following promotion from Heidelberg Golf Club Division 3, finishing in seventh spot with a 6-10 record.
After a slow start to last year’s campaign, the Burra found their feet and wins against minor premier Banyule, Thomastown and Diamond Creek have given the club reason to believe their young crop of players can again trouble the premiership aspirants in 2020.
“I think as a club we were reasonably pleased about where we sat,” Carelli told NFNL.org.au.
“We would’ve preferred a couple more wins or results to go our way, but to compete the way we did in the division was really good.”
St Mary’s will continue to turn towards developing its talented crop of under-19 players as it looks to climb up the ladder.
After playing off in the Division 1 grand final last year, there are a raft of names from the under-19 team ready to give the Burra’s senior team a push towards potential finals action.
“Our recruiting hasn’t been as fruitful as we’d have liked. It’ll be more so about the development of our younger players and them playing full seasons of senior footy,” Carelli said.
“The likes of Joe Maggio, Connor Kissane and Tane Cotter all played around seven to eight games for us last year before they went back down to captain the under-19s in the finals, so I’d expect to see a lot of improvement from them this year.
“We haven’t got too many through the door this year, so we’ll look to develop the likes of Tane Cotter and (2019 Division 2 reserves best and fairest winner) Connor Gedge and hopefully they can be like recruits for us with a full season of senior footy.
“I’m really looking forward to seeing Tane play a senior year of footy.
“Connor had a really good year and every time he’s played seniors he has performed really well.”
Boosting the influx of youth for the Burra is the imminent return of Jacob Yeomans, who had his 2019 season prematurely ended in the Round 10 win over Banyule.
Yeomans had been enjoying a superb campaign and had been named among the Burra’s best players in four of nine matches before suffering a season-ending injury.
“He’s had his surgery and it’s been successful,” Carelli said.
“He’s done some light simulation work so far and hopefully he’s on track to pull on the boots again in the early rounds.
“Hopefully he just has one of those years where he’s injury-free. Being a young bloke, we just want to see him stay on the park for as long as he can.”
St Mary’s has had to handle several of its young players leaving to join Division 1 clubs during the off-season.
Despite losing some exciting players, such as Curtis Howden-Crhak, Rhys Rigoni and Hayden Bolzon, to higher levels of football, Carelli was quick to praise the junior club for the calibre of players it is producing.
“It’s the nature of the beast,” Carelli said.
“It’s a credit to the St Mary’s Junior Football Club and the program they’ve put together.
“The last couple of years we’ve been able to keep our young blokes at the club. Some guys choose to stay and try reward the club while others choose to develop quicker and play a better standard of footy, which is fine by me.
“All those players who choose to leave do so with my blessing and they know they’re always welcome back at St Mary’s no matter what.”
Carelli is placing his trust in experienced players such as Dillan Ronalds, Chris Petroro, Myles Guldon and Nick Dean to continue to nurture the young talent within the club.
He has also instilled more solid defensive structures for his young side to complement their attacking flair.
“We got opened up last year a bit too much, so we had to focus on that in the back half of the year,” Carelli said.
“We managed to wrestle it back a bit and get better results.
“We’re going to work a bit harder on that – that’ll be our main focus early doors so that we can improve our defensive side of the game.”
Carelli is confident that if the Burra’s defensive efforts improve, they can become “a bit of an unknown” in terms of potential.
However, he was keeping a lid on expectations for 2020, with the main aim to surpass the number of wins from the 2019 campaign.
“We want to match what we did last year, that’s a bare minimum as a group,” Carelli said.
“We’re going to look at booking in those six to seven wins. Then, if we get a bit of luck to go our way, we can easily turn six or seven wins into eight, nine or ten wins.”
St Mary’s practice match schedule kicks off with a traditional fixture against Old Paradians on March 14, before travelling to Woori Yallock and then tuning up against last year’s second division premier Whittlesea.
“It should be a couple of really tough and strong practice games for us to head into Round 1,” Carelli said.
St Mary’s 2020 home and away campaign starts against Watsonia on April 4 at Whatmough Park.
