Daley gets to work on Townsville comps

GLAD to be back at work and in a footy environment, Cairns’ Kieran Daley is now taking on a dual North Queensland city approach with AFL Queensland.

Daley, who has been AFL Queensland’s Cairns-based regional manager over the last few years, has now taken on the role of managing AFL Townsville’s competitions following the recent coronavirus shutdown of sport.

The former Redlands Bomber in the NEAFL was stood down like many others when coronavirus hit and has over the last couple of weeks returned to work.

As well as his usual FNQ duties, Daley, a Townsville product originally, will be back and forth up the Bruce Highway in the coming weeks to get the southern competition started.

“I will be looking after the competition management down here, the seniors, juniors and women,” Daley said, as he was putting together the Townsville competition’s fixture on Wednesday morning.

“We will be running some base game-development activities in both Cairns and

Townsville, around club-based Auskick in the regions.

“I think one of the big positives is more people are taking off their club hats and working really positively towards what is best for the game, not just their individual clubs.”

The Townsville competition is set to start on the same weekend as the FNQ league, around July 10.

Daley, usually a dashing defender for Cairns Saints locally, is hopeful he will still be able to feature at Griffiths Park in 2020.

First-year Saints coach Wes Glass, a former Port Douglas defender, thinks his old club will still be one of the club’s to beat in the condensed 2020 campaign. “We want to go all the way,” he said.

The AFL Cairns season starts next weekend.