No Michelsen Medal winners to be running around in BFNL in 2024

It has been just over a month since Golden Square won the 2023 premiership against Sandhurst, but since then four winners of the Michelsen Medal have departed the league.

Strathfieldsaye's Lachlan Sharp (to Bridgewater), Golden Square's Jack Geary (to Cohuna Kangas), Sandhurst's Lee Coghlan (to Bridgewater) and now Strathfieldsaye's Jake Moorhead (to Pascoe Vale) are the only previous Michelsen Medal winners who played in the competition this year, but all four are on the move.

READ MORE: Footy journey full circle for Coghlan in return to Bridgewater

And this year's winner of the Michelsen Medal, Eaglehawk's Noah Wheeler, won't take to the field next season due to a knee reconstruction.

Coghlan won the Michelsen Medal in 2009 in his first full year of senior football; Sharp in 2017; Geary in 2018; and Moorhead in 2022.

Not only are the departing quartet all Michelsen Medal winners, but all four captained their clubs this year, while three of them - Coghlan, Geary and Sharp - are all part of the BFNL's 200-game club.

Moorhead played 139 games for the Storm according to his PlayHQ stats.

The quartet have 13 BFNL flags between them with Geary winning six with Golden Square (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2023); Sharp four at Strathfieldsaye (2014, 2015, 2017 and 2019); Moorhead two at Strathfieldsaye (2017 and 2019); and Coghlan one at Sandhurst (2016).

The foursome also have a combined 18 inter-league appearances between them, with their contribution to the BFNL far outweighing just what they have achieved with their clubs.

Both Geary and Sharp, members of the BFNL's 2010-19 Team of the Decade and winners of grand final best-on-ground medals, have left to pursue their first coaching opportunities and Coghlan is headed back home to where he first played footy as a junior at Bridgewater, while playing at Pascoe Vale is much closer to home now for Melbourne-based Moorhead.

READ MORE: Jack Geary appointed new coach of Cohuna Kangas

As well as Geary and Sharp, fellow BFNL 2010-19 Team of the Decade member and Sandhurst 250-gamer Matt Thornton, also a premiership and inter-league player, has finished in the BFNL having made the decision to retire.

Sandhurst (Hamish Hosking) and Kangaroo Flat (Ryan O'Keefe) have also lost their best and fairest winners of this year.

As well as the four Michelsen medalists on the move, the league will also head into 2024 with only one coach at the helm who has previously coached a BFNL flag - Gisborne's Rob Waters.

Waters coached Gisborne's 2022 premiership and after moving aside from the role post-flag was reinstated with three rounds remaining this year after Brad Fox stood down.

READ MORE: Lachlan Sharp to play in the Loddon Valley FNL with Bridgewater

Among the coaching changes leading into the 2024 season are Darryl Wilson departing Strathfieldsaye and in a decision that has shocked many football followers, Golden Square not reappointing Christian Carter.

Wilson is a three-time premiership coach at the Storm in 2017, 2015 and 2014, while just over a month ago Carter coached Golden Square to this year's flag.

In what has has been an off-season where the departure of top-end talent has created more of the headlines than any influx of recruits - Castlemaine following the appointment of former AFL player Michael Hartley as a notable exception - the BFNL has also lost one of its clubs.

Kyneton, which has a history in the BFNL dating back to 1932, has left for the neighboring Riddell District Football Netball League, basing its decision on a "sustainable future for our club, fair and equitable competition and an enhanced experience for all our players".

The departure of Kyneton leaves the BFNL next year as a nine-club competition for the first time since 2008 and now void of a slice of its country presence in what has so far been an off-season of significant upheaval across the league's landscape.

2009 - Lee Coghlan (Sandhurst)

2010 - Josh Bowe (Eaglehawk)

2011 - Wayne Schultz (Castlemaine)

2012 - Scott Walsh (Gisborne)

2013 - Tim Martin (Sandhurst)

2014 - Tim Martin (Sandhurst)

2015 - Brodie Filo (Eaglehawk)

2016 - Kristan Height (Sandhurst)

2017 - Lachlan Sharp (Strathfieldsaye)

2018 - Jack Geary (Golden Square)

2019 - Adam Baird (Golden Square)

2022 - Jake Moorhead (Strathfieldsaye)

2023 - Noah Wheeler (Eaglehawk)

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