By Marcus Uhe
A strong culture and the presence of senior, mature heads on the track has kept complacency at the door during Narre Warren’s preseason, according to premiership coach Shane Dwyer.
Having lost just once on the way to a memorable victory in torrid conditions in the decider last year, they could be forgiven for letting training standards slip during the summer heat in the midst of intense running sessions, or for the message from the coaching group to grow stale.
But Dwyer says the motivation is simple.
“You don’t get tired of winning flags,” he said.
“I could understand if we’d won the grand final by 15 goals, there might be a fair bit of complacency, but it was a lot tougher than that.
“I don’t think there’s much (complacency) there and if there is, we’ll draw that out of them in the practice games.
“We try and implement a player-driven system, a lot of players have a lot of input into training so that they’re not just hearing my voice all the time or my assistant’s voice all the time.
“We’ve got a lot of really good leaders who I’m more than happy to let take-over a drill whenever they want.”
Leading the charge once again are Jake Richardson, Tom Miller and Kurt Mutimer, who is stepping-in to a playing-assistant coaching role in place of Brad Scalzo, who will make his welcome return to on-field action after injuring his knee during preseason last year.
The star onballer will be one of a handful of new and returning players pushing for inclusion in the powerhouse side, including Ryan Quirk and Matt Peteira, while competition from the under 19 brigade has injected enthusiasm from within.
Jacob Mutimer, Logan Hitchcock and Daniel Toner have been the standouts among that group, according to Dwyer.
“We’ve got a couple of guys that missed out on games in the grand final last year so you’d hope that they take another good step-forward and become regular players, which I’m sure they will,” he said.
“If you miss out on a grand final, a lot of guys can nick-off to another club.
“They’ve hung around and hopefully they get the reward this year.
“We’ve got Jesse Davies who was injured for a lot of the year and missed out on two grand finals now because of injury.
“We’ll be really keen to stay healthy and get there again.
“We’ve got kids coming through from the 19s last year that we’re hoping to play many games as well.
“The guys that we got from last year, the senior players, they’ll just be who they are and play how they play.
“You’ve just got to hope that the kids coming through can develop and settle quickly into senior life and keep you going.”
One spot that will be up for grabs, however, is Josh Tonna’s, with the five-time premiership winner choosing to retire on a high, having won a premiership with his brother Mitchell last year.
History beckons for this nest of Magpies, looking to win back-to-back premierships for the first time since their golden run a decade ago in 2012-13, when they claimed six titles in eight seasons between 2006 and 2013.
Having claimed the 2019 premiership and not playing a full season in 2020 and 2021, one could argue that it’s already been achieved, and that the beginning of another successful era is on the horizon.
But Dwyer is not concerned about the weight of expectation on his chargers after 2022’s trevails.
“I reckon last year going into grand final day, the expectation couldn’t get any bigger than what it was.
“We were massive favourites and everyone expected us to win by 10-15 goals, and we were four goals down halfway through the third quarter on a really wet, shitty day.
“If we rolled-over and got done in that grand final, I would have thought that maybe the pressure got to us, but I don’t think (it did).
“We’re going to hopefully be up there again, competing with your Wandins and Woori Yallocks.
“As long as we stay fit and healthy, we’ll give it another good shake.”
Their season begins in Pakenham against the Lions in a stand-alone fixture in round one on Saturday 15 April.
