Drysdale steps up in grade

DRYSDALE senior women’s coach Stuart Craven says the standard of AFL Barwon’s women’s league is “much higher” than what his side played in last year.

Craven said the club’s decision to change leagues had allowed the Hawks to form a distinct local identity.

“It’s been great, it’s just a completely different set up really this year,” he said.

“We (us and North Geelong) were the only two teams in the whole of Geelong last year.

“If you didn’t want to play at North and you wanted to play at all you had to come and a play at Drysdale, so the travelling was real challenging — it was very difficult.

“We had people come from all over Geelong whereas, now we’re all pretty much all Bellarine Peninsula people, so it’s much more of a real Drysdale team rather than a Geelong team.”

Craven said he was surprised about the pre-season expectation around his team.

The Hawks moved from Ballarat’s Goldfields women’s league second division, but have had mixed results from four grading games, the most recent a 10-goal loss to North Geelong.

“I actually don’t know why we were being touted as the benchmark,” Craven said.

“We had an awful lot of girls who hadn’t played any footy at all last year. By and large, we’re a brand new team.

“We were only in second division in the Ballarat comp last year, I’d say that the whole of the AFL Barwon competition is stronger, it’s a much higher standard than last year.”

While acknowledging the club’s inconsistent start, Craven was optimistic his charges would challenge for the Division 1 title come the pointy end of the season.

“We’re very happy with all four of the grading games, two comfortable wins and then we had two pretty heavy losses on the scoreboard against St Mary’s and North (Geelong), but I think we acquitted ourselves really well,” he said.

“We’ll be aiming to win 80 per cent of our games I would have thought.

“However they sort out the finals, we’ll hopefully be in a good position to make the most of that.”