The Bloods - coming off just one win and the wooden-spoon this year - are the last HDFL club to announce their 2014 coach.

While this will be 47-year-old Arthur's first senior coaching role, he has a wealth of football experience.

He played more than 400 senior games at clubs including Koondrook-Barham, Wakool, Deniliquin Rovers, Murrabit and Cohuna.

Arthur played in four senior premierships and two reserves flags during his career.

He coached a reserves flag with Murrabit and was this year a key member off-field of Wakool's Golden Rivers Football League senior premiership as chairman of selectors and assistant coach.

Arthur says he's excited by the challenge of taking on the Bloods, who have been on a long search for a coach to take over from Tony Southcombe.

"It's going to be a challenge and that's why I'm looking forward to it... the only way we can go is up," Arthur said on Wednesday.

"I haven't had a senior coaching role before and the opportunity came up at Elmore and I see it as a good fit."

Arthur is based in Koondrook and plans to target his recruiting away from Bendigo.

"I've got a good network of players I can try to draw on and I've already had a few players really interested, which is positive," Arthur said.

Arthur's first priority is to secure two playing assistant coaches for the Bloods.

"We've got a lot of hard work in front of us, but we'll just go about it quietly behind the scenes," Arthur said.

"I've been involved with a lot of good coaches and think I can bring some good ideas to Elmore, so I'm looking forward to getting stuck into it."

Elmore president Andrew Holmberg said the Bloods were now looking ahead to 2014 with a positive outlook following their coaching appointment.

"With Stephen coming on board from where he has been, it means we can move away from the Bendigo area (for recruiting) because it's such a hunted area," Holmberg said.

"We need to get some contacts into some different areas, so we see some positives there that we can tap into.

"Don't get me wrong, we've had a lot of turnover of players, but it's certainly a lot more positive for us than it was a couple of weeks ago.

"Sometimes you need to have a bit of a cleanout, but hopefully, now we can have a bit of stability moving forward and I think Stephen is going to be good for that.

"There's certainly a lot of water to go under the bridge, but we've got ourselves a start."

Elmore is fixtured to play Heathcote at home in round one next year on April 5.