WATSONIA coach Corey McCall concedes even he is surprised with how well his side has started the 2015 season.
The Saints have won each of McCall’s first three games at the helm to sit atop the Division 3 ladder, unbeaten after one month of the season.
Among the Saints early scalps are fourth-placed St Mary’s, 2014 grand finalist Reservoir and much fancied newcomer Banyule.
McCall said he didn’t expect his side to be sitting atop the ladder after Round 4.
“No I didn’t, I’ll be honest with you,” McCall told NFL.org.au.
“We’re trying to build from the bottom up on and off the field. We were planning we might get off to a slowish start more than the start we’ve had.
“Things have come together pretty quickly.”
McCall has continued to throw young players in the deep end early in his coaching tenure, sticking with the youth policy his club has employed in recent seasons.
The decision has paid dividends with a number of the club’s emerging players beginning the season in solid form.
“We’ve obviously got a very young list. I think there were 14 under-19s from Watsonia two years ago who were playing seniors last year,” McCall said.
“All of those blokes have really improved. Rodney Box, James Latross, Jamie Haber, Jack Larkin are all 20, 21 now and their improvement over pre-season has been really good.
“There is still a lot of improvement in all of them. To see what they’re doing on the training track and then in games is fantastic.”
Watsonia’s fast start looks even more impressive when stacked up against the evenness of the entire Division 3 competition.
Heading into Round 5, the average winning margin in third division is just 21 points – demonstrating any of the seven sides is capable of winning on their day.
“It looks like it’s going to be pretty tough and week by week, anyone can beat anyone,” McCall said.
“That’s what my message has been to the boys. We can’t look at the fixture in its entirety and look at who we’re playing three times, it’s more like every win is worth its weight in gold.
“The better the start you get means you’re not chasing wins at the end of the year. Some clubs that could play finals will now be trying to get those wins later in the year.”
Watsonia is averaging 13 points a game more than in 2014, with its spread of goal kickers one of its strongest assets this year.
Nathan Groves booted five goals in the Round 2 win over St Mary’s, Jeremy Bennett has kicked nine goals over the past two weeks, while Andy Bennett chimed in with five at the weekend.
McCall said his club had worked hard on its forward structure over the off-season.
“One thing we have worked on is being unpredictable,” he said.
“When I watched the vision of Watsonia in 2014, I could see a lot of young kids but they were predictable and just kicked long to contests. Opposition coaches could just put two or three players back in front of Jeremy Bennett.
“Jeremy started on the ball against Reservoir and Andy on the wing. We’ll keep mixing things up because we don’t want to be predictable and we don’t want to let the opposition settle against us.”
Following its strong start to the year, Watsonia this week goes into its first game as outright favourite when it hosts bottom-placed Heidelberg West.
McCall sees it as somewhat of a danger game, with the Hawks proving themselves to be much better than their 0-3 record suggests.
“This is probably the first game we’ll go into where everyone will tip and expect us to win,” he said.
“However, in saying that you look at Heidelberg West’s last two games and they ran South Morang to within a kick and were in front of Epping for a long time on the weekend and just got beaten.
“With the evenness of the competition, bar Round 1, Heidelberg West’s form stacks up. They just haven’t managed to get the four points just yet but we’ll respect them just as much as anyone else we play.”
