Bluey to coach at Ammos
GEELONG Amateur has landed a major coup ahead of next season’s inaugural AFL Barwon senior women’s football competition, with Geelong champion Tim McGrath signing on as coach.
McGrath, who has a family connection to the club with two of his daughters playing football at Ammos, previously coached Grovedale and was a part-time assistant to Jason Davenport at North Shore.
The former star defender, who played 219 of his 226 AFL games at the Cats, said he was excited by the prospect of coaching his own side again.
“The thing I like about it is the senior women, most of them have played already so I imagine the skill set is going to be in place for most of them,” McGrath said.
“What it will be now is fine tuning that and then devising a game plan that I think is going to win games and is going to be good to watch.
“We want people to be able to come and enjoy watching women’s footy and watching a brand of footy that is exciting.
“They approached me dur- ing the year and asked me if I would be interested and I said I didn’t really know, but the longer the year went the more I enjoyed it. It’s such a great club and the people there are great.
“Obviously having my daughters there playing, to have an involvement with them is going to be good.”
McGrath helped out Geelong Amateur when required this year with its junior girls football program and said that with the senior competition set to be played on Sundays it would still allow him to keep a close eye on his daughters, Molly and Mackenzie, next year.
With Geelong fielding its own team in the AFLW competition in 2019, he hinted that coaching at a higher level was something he might look at more seriously down the track.
“With the women’s footy being in its infancy, if I was that way inclined down the track — and Geelong is going to have an AFLW licence in a year and a half — bigger picture there hasn’t been ( many) ex-AFL players involved in coaching the women’s teams,” he said.
“I enjoyed my coaching at Grovedale and had a bit of a role at North Shore but when this came up, bigger picture I thought potentially down the track I could take it somewhere if that was what I wanted to do.
“But it’s a good way to get involved at local level again.”
Geelong Amateur is one of 12 clubs to have registered an interest in the AFL Barwon women’s competition, alongside North Geelong, Drysdale, Barwon Heads, Bell Post Hill, Colac Imperials, Geelong West, Grovedale, Lara, Ocean Grove, St Joseph’s and St Mary’s.