ferret wrote:Usually when a new coach comes in to a club for his first stint at coaching at league level the season appears to get lost with the new coach assessing his players and what they can do. Putting in place new structures that the players have to learn and getting a coaching group together along with recruiting. This I feel was the senario for the Eagles in 2019.
Jade Sheedy hit the ground running from the first training session, he must have done a lot of homework straight after his appointment. He is well organised, has a simple but exciting game plan that the players have quickly adapted to and enjoy playing to. From the start he knew what players he wanted in the team and where they would play. Explored different football competitions to find likely league players ( Seymour and Carcuro). Reviewed the player list to find players that might not have been given great opportunities in the past but had skills he might be able to utilise (Wehr, Comitogianni and Lee). But best off all he has given the youngster a go (Jones, McNeil and Mansell) plus playing many players in the reserves from the 2018 and 2019 premiership teams. Jade Sheedy has been a breath of fresh air for the club.
Most of the players he has brought in - Seymour, Wehr, Mansell, Jones particularly - can all the kick the ball really well which has been a change from previous years. With three of these players playing in our defensive half this allows us to set up play down back and push forward confidently. Von Bertouch up forward has been a great move and probably a couple of years overdue. It does feel like we will see a 6-7 goal game from him in the coming weeks.
Too early to tell what sort of player Tsitas will be for us after one game. It will be interesting to see where he is at after getting used to Sheed'y gameplan and the rest of the team.
With Thompson, Goldsworthy, Foote, Lonergan (and potentially Lowson) coming back in the next week or so the Club has will be in the nice position of wondering how they will all fit in and who to drop. If they all came back in next week I think the unlucky ones might be Lee, Firns and Pudney. Then the remaining two spots might be any of Rowland, Wehr, Comittogianni and Hall.
The Club hasn't had this much depth in a long, long time.