Bendigo footy powerhouse Sandhurst has added the last puzzle piece to its club with the formation of a senior women's football team for the 2024 season.
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With strong senior sides in football and netball plus a junior academy and pathway program that is the envy of many - a senior women's team was the one thing missing for the Dragons - until now.
"This makes us a complete club," Dragons president Mark O'Farrell said.
"We've been throwing around the idea for a couple of months and put out an expression of interest.
"We got enough numbers from that to suggest we could compete, so now it's just about putting up the infrastructure around it, like finding a coach and some support staff.
"We still need another six to eight players to give us enough of a buffer for when players are injured or on holidays, but we're confident we'll get those between now and the start of the season.
The Dragons plan to enter the side into the CVFLW, making it an eight-team competition should all other clubs field teams again.
"We've still got to be ticked off by AFLCV, but those conversations been pretty positive and as long as we come back to them with a final program over the next fortnight, we should be fine to play in the CVFLW," O'Farrell said.
Castlemaine has won the past two premierships in the CVFLW, losing only two games during that period.
The introduction of the team completes the pathway for junior girls at the Dragons.
Previously, once they had finished under-18s, they would have to look elsewhere to play.
"Once our juniors finished under-18s, they needed to go somewhere else to play, so we wanted to provide a full pathway, which we thought we might as well do sooner rather than later," O'Farrell said.
"With the number of the girls coming through the academy that have talent, we're keen to hold onto them.
"Our under-18 demographic suggests it will be at the end of next year that we'll have some players pass through to the senior program, but when we got that good amount of interest, we just went for it right away.
"There's a few girls returning that haven't played in a couple of years, along with some who've been hanging around the club.
"We had good numbers at our first session on Monday night with some under-18 and 16s girls also participating, which is a really good start.
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