Hawks looking to the future
‘This is a long-term plan’
DRYSDALE co-coaches Luke Matthews and Daniel Jull are on a mission to return the club to BFL powerhouse status.
The Hawks have been the biggest players in the off-season, attracting quality from the GFL including Jarrod Garth, Jarrod Love and Chris Lynch (Bell Park) and Mitch McGuire (Leopold), while former Essendon rookie Lauchlan Dalgleish has joined from Footscray VFL and Ben Carmichael has returned from Queenscliff.
But Matthews is adamant his club is not taking a oneyear hit at the 2019 flag, instead setting the Hawks up for a sustained era of success.
“That’s definitely my No. 1 goal, to bring back all our home-grown players,” Matthews said.
“A lot of people that know local footy (would know), we do have a lot of quality players running around in the GFL, GDFL and interstate playing in the WAFL. We’ve got lots of guys out there. It’s definitely one of my goals and Daniel’s, together as co-coaches, that we want to bring all those guys home to play for Drysdale.
“There is some potential there for long-term success and to potentially be a powerhouse, but there’s a lot of hard work to be done. This isn’t a 12month thing, this is a longterm plan to set the club up for long-term success.”
Former Drysdale products playing in the GFL include Tom Ruggles, Mitch and Lachie Patten and Stephen Bensted — a potential goldmine of talent given the points cap.
The recruiting for this year hasn’t finished yet, with the Hawks eyeing one more GFL player to fill their player points cap.
The Hawks have been allocated 43 player points for this season, three more than the standard 40, on the back of a handful of lean years on-field.
Numbers on the track have been outstanding and Matthews said it will be a matter of getting the players to jell and execute the game plan as quickly as possible.
“Ever since we were appointed we’ve been going over things, assessing how we want to play and the brand we prefer and want the club to play,” he said.
“We’ll finalise all that sort of stuff in the next two or three weeks.
“I think the group’s got a clear indication of how we want to play; we’ve pretty much been training to how we want to play. It’s just implementing a bit more structures and game plan stuff in the next month or so.
“We’ve been averaging 60 on the track pre-Christmas, that was five weeks, two nights a week. We started back Monday night, had 50 there.
“There’s definitely a good feeling and some excitement at the football club.”
And Matthews said Drysdale would produce a style of football worth paying to see.
“An exciting brand of football, very attacking,” he said.
“We want to be an aggressive defensive team as well — it’s not all about kicking goals — but our supporters and the league and opposition teams are definitely going to see a different Drysdale team in 2019.”