A GREATER onus will be put on club coaches in an effort to avoid the issues that plagued the build-up to the Bendigo Bank Bendigo Football League’s inter-league match last year.
While Bendigo won its inter-league match against Ballarat last year by 21 points, its build-up in which it constantly had players withdraw, and only nine players turn up to its first training session less than two weeks from the game, drew negative headlines state-wide.
Bendigo’s 2010 inter-league match is now just over a month away, with the league to take on West Gippsland Latrobe in a twilight match at the Queen Elizabeth Oval on Saturday, May 22.
The coach is again Jeff Brennan, who with his selectors has picked an initial squad of about 70 players.
That list will be distributed to all 10 coaches, who have until 10am this Monday to let the league know which of their players are available and willing to play, who is unavailable, and add anyone not already named in the initial list.
“What we want is of those initial names of about 70, we might get it down to around 50 after we have got the feedback from the coaches,’’ Brennan said yesterday.
“So once we name those 50 or so players, that will mean every one of them has made themselves available, with the backing of their coach.’’
Brennan met with four of the BFL coaches - Nick Carter, Murray Collins, Ty Elliot and Keiran Nihill - on Wednesday night to discuss his initial squad.
The league is satisfied the six coaches who didn’t attend all had legitimate reasons.
“By going to the coaches with this, what it’s doing is putting the onus on the coaches to come back and say, `here’s my players who are available and keen, and here’s the ones who aren’t’,’’ Brennan said.
“Once we get through that, then on Monday what we announce will be a squad that is committed to playing and we won’t have the issues we had last year.’’
Such were the problems Brennan encountered last year with player unavailability, he was forced to select BFL chief executive officer Steven Oliver as a last-minute replacement.
But despite the far from ideal preparation, the young Bendigo side that included 16 first-time inter-league representatives shone at the next level to record one of the league’s best wins over its arch-rivals, Ballarat.
“As part of Jeff’s meeting with the coaches last night, he spoke about the training squad, the training program that will be set-up and how all the players will be given a duty of care assurance from the league that everything will be done in our power that if a player is injured he won’t be forced to train,’’ Oliver said.
“In fact, we will be making sure he doesn’t train. And in the week before the game we have organised for team physio Craig Mansfield to assess any player who may be injured or sore from the weekend’s game leading in.
“So we want the coaches to be confident their players will be given the very best medical care and treatment, and that the training program has been put in place to get them together, rather than to flog them into the ground.
”But we have no interest in selecting a player who has no interest in representing Bendigo, which is why we’ve asked the coaches to go through the initial list and get back to us by Monday on the commitment and availability of their players.
“While Jeff will be doing his absolute best as he did last year, this inter-league program needs to be driven by the club coaches with their support.’’
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