By RUSSELL BENNETT
THE Drouin seniors didn’t win a game this Gippsland League season. They didn’t even have a percentage above 20.
And to somehow make matters worse, they stunningly lost their newly appointed player-coach to a position with AFL Tasmania just a blink of an eye after he was announced in the role.
Yet things are looking up for the Hawks. After a nightmare season that most expect would have left them down for the count, they’re just not. They’re hell-bent on picking themselves up off the canvas and fighting their way out of trouble.
“We’re in the premier football competition in south-east Victoria and we take pride in that – we need to rise to the occasion,” said Drouin president Eric Bott, standing out in the middle of his club ground, which is set to see further upgrades as part of the Hawks’ strategy moving forward.
“What we don’t want to do is whinge about what we haven’t got.
“We want to get our own house in order and make things happen.”
Bott offered a reminder, in case anyone had forgotten, that the Hawks’ played off in consecutive grand finals just four years ago. It shows how quickly the club has slipped, but it also shows how quickly they could pick themselves back up.
“We lost a lot of players since and we didn’t have a very good junior structure, so for the past couple of years we’ve worked really hard with our juniors and if you look at the results we made the finals last year in the under-18s and we missed the finals this year on percentage,” he said.
“We had 15 kids coming out of the under-18s into the seniors for next season and we’ve already signed 12 of them.”
As for the situation with Clinton Proctor, who had signed on to coach the club in 2015, Bott said it was always about more than just one person.
“It’s been a lot of work and a lot of that has been player-driven,” Bott said of the determination to turn things around.
“David Olsen, our captain, was probably a key driver in that.
“He’s a good mate of Clinton’s and Bob McCallum and Damien Carmody and they started the discussions.
“Probably what triggered it all was the night we had the meeting here of members when Warragul decided they wanted to go to Casey.
“We had a meeting at the club with 70 people and a real sense of community came out.
“Out of that Clinton said he’d come back to help the club.”
While Proctor was the face of the resurgence, the likes of McCallum and Carmody also loomed large.
McCallum is fresh off a starring role in Buln Buln’s EDFL East premiership side and he has since been announced as Proctor’s replacement in the coaching chair.
Carmody, a former Drouin skipper, used Twitter to say this about his return to the club: “cannot wait, building to greatness with great people”.
While Proctor wasn’t back at the Hawks for long over the off-season, he sure made one hell of an impact. Players bought into his system, not him individually.
“We worked really hard to build that structure and make sure the likes of David Olsen, Luke Duffy and Brod Fraser all signed on as well,” Bott said.
“I don’t know how good we’re going to be next year but you put that package together and we know we’re going to be more competitive.
“It’s actually an exciting time for us right now because it’s a little bit of the unknown.
“It was a big disappointment for us as a club in losing Clinton – it’s hard to actually describe how much – but when you actually bring it all back it’s a program that’s really strong.
“To me, that’s the great legacy that he leaves us with.
“He’s given us not only good quality footballers, but really passionate and committed people.”
