Owens heads for shot at AFL

CHAD Owens’ ambitions to coach at an AFL club have been boosted with the twotime QAFL premiership winner signing as an assistant at VFL club Coburg.

Less than three months after considering giving up coaching, Owens (pictured) has announced he will leave his post at Palm Beach Currumbin in order to move his family to Victoria where a new challenge awaits.

“I’m really thankful for the opportunity and it will be an eye-opener,” Owens said.

“I’ll take all the things I have been lucky enough to learn up here with me and maybe give it a bit of a twist. I’m really looking forward to it.

“I’ll have to change the way I go about certain things because of the weather but standards don’t change.”

Owens, a teacher at PBC High, completed his level three coaching course with the AFL last year under Coburg head coach Leigh Adams, who rang the mentor a week-and-a-half ago to offer the position.

“He is someone I have been speaking with regularly about footy,” Owens said.

“I have the best wife (Bea) in the whole world. She said ‘if you think it will help the family and something you really want to have a go at then let’s do it’.”

Owens, who grew up in the country Victorian town of Wadonga, and Bea will move with children Luis, 4, and Connor, 1, just before Christmas.

Owens said the move will help in his bid to one day join an AFL club’s coaching ranks.

“Opportunities are limited (in Queensland) in that respect because we only have two AFL clubs and the NEAFL teams all have their coaching structures set up for the next three years

– it makes it harder to progress,” he said.

The Lions won back-to-back QAFL premierships in 2017 and 2018 with Owens but are on the hunt for a new coach as preseason looms.

Owens revealed he was considering giving up coaching after his second grand final win in September in order to focus on his young family but resigned in October for 2019.

Palm Beach Currumbin have now released Owens so he can pursue a new opportunity at a higher level.

“It will be most disappointing to see Chad and his family leave our club and the Gold Coast, but Victoria has more to offer to enable him to pursue his coaching career,” Palm Beach Currumbin president Anne Cornish said.

Cornish said the search for a new coach begins now.