New era begins at Port
THE first and biggest role of any new coach is developing a culture, and that hasn’t been any different for me since joining Portarlington.
I’m not putting Portarlington down but they’ve been in the wilderness for a long time, and it’s not the players’ fault that they are there now and it’s not the board’s fault, they just haven’t had exposure to anyone that’s been at higher levels.
It’s no surprise the standard of the BFL has shot to another level, because of the professionalism brought to the league by those that have played and been successful at a higher standard.
There are a lot of ex-GFL players coming back that are bringing that professionalism to the BFL, guys like Mitch Herbison and the Carson brothers at Anglesea.
Gone are the days you can just rock up to training, do your training and then rock up to a game on Saturday and expect to be good.
There are hours you have to put in to go above and beyond, just to be competitive in the BFL.
Portarlington was behind the eight-ball in that regard, but everyone on-field and off-field has jumped on board, and we’re putting in place things structurally on the field and off the field in terms of preparation and rehabilitation.
When I got there in November last year in pre-season, they didn’t even have a huddle or kick-in zones, or anything like that.
Players are now jumping out of their skins to learn, having never been exposed to those things before.
I’ve got players ringing me every week in work hours, asking about game structures and what do they do in this scenario, and what do they have to do to be better footballers.
And I don’t think they’ve ever done that before at Portarlington.
We had a honesty session with a couple of guys — one-on-one with myself — about a month ago and it could have gone either really badly or really well, and to the boys’ credit it’s gone really well.
They now understand what they’ve got to do to make Portarlington a better club and be good players in the BFL now.
What’s driving it is clubs like Ammos, Barwon Heads and Torquay, who are really setting the bar.
If you don’t have professional ideas and a team of players that want to get on board, you’re going to get left behind.
Thankfully, there hasn’t been a struggle and everyone’s bought in really well.
The next challenge is converting the positive change and attitude into wins.
Now that we have a sense of identity and direction we will get results, the sky is the limit.
Players have belief in themselves and each other they can close the gap and it’s the players that need to keep driving a winning culture.
Once we get a few wins they will become hungry for more success.