Bond stocks up with quality people for QAFLW program
A HOST of premiership winners, former players and decades of experience headline Bond University’s new coaching ranks ahead of the QAFLW season.
The Bull Sharks unveiled five new coaches for 2021 including Krystal Scott (defence), Simon Foat (stoppages), Meredith Denvir (scoring), Lydia Pingel (skills) and Beth McLaughlin (reserves head coach).
“I hire coaches on character before competency because we can teach competency but you can’t teach character,” Bond director of coaching David Ashkar said. “We want quality people in our program first and foremost.
“Krystal, Lydia and Beth have been in our program for two or three years. They are also great coaches and will fit into our culture very well.
“Meredith Denvir was the head coach of Vermont senior women and she won the inaugural grand final with them.
“Simon Foat has plenty of experience. He’s coached everywhere, has been involved in women’s footy and I’ve known him for years.”
The goal for the Bull Sharks has always been to develop from within and improve their personnel on and off the field.
“We could go hard on recruitment but we want to really develop the players that we have got,” Ashkar said.
“We have a fairly young list and we are excited to keep developing them as players and people.”
The Bull Sharks made the preliminary finals in both grades in 2020 and will start their campaign with pre-season matches against last year’s grand finalists.
“We have a couple of practice games against Yeronga and Coolangatta coming up and they were the grand finalists last year,” Ashkar said.
“We head into our third season of the QAFLW competition and hopefully we can go deep into finals again.
“We don’t talk about winning grand finals – everyone wants to win one – but they are hard to win.
“We want to make finals first and foremost. If you can make finals it gives you an opportunity to win some silverware.”
The Bull Sharks play a trial against 2020 premier Yeronga at Bond University on Saturday.