Bates Banter

Today the big ball rolls again as we embark on a new season of northern league football against a backdropofsignificantchange.

TIndeed,insomeregardstodaymarksthestartofa new era, with new coach Jarrod Young at the helm for his first northern premier league match, and Gower Park in the middle of a facility upgrade and preparation to be a training venue for the FIFA Women’sWorldCup

Melville finished an incredibly long 2022 season fifth in the national league – a new high water mark for the club – but for now our minds need to be concentrated more onthebigchallengesahead

We have a host of new faces at the club who hopefully we will get to know better through their deeds on the pitch and in the dugout than anything I could say about themhere.

I know in my playing days we used to regularly experience a turnover of at least 30 per cent of the squad from year to year, so that is nothing new. However this time around our departures have unfortunately been pretty concentrated in attacking areasandwehavebeenhitbythelossofourfourtopgoalscorersfromlastseason.

Offsetting that, Jarrod has already proved himself to be highly organised and committed in his dual role as first team coach and academy director. On that note we should also point out Jarrod is our first northern league coach who hasn’t also played fortheclubatnorthernornationalleaguelevelsinceRayPooleyinlate2005

Meanwhile everything is still mildly chaotic at Gower Park, after the No 1 pitch floodlights were installed in the middle of the cyclone season, the changing rooms were renovated to give us a lot less showers and our clubrooms were hollowed out forFIFAusage

Unfortunately we are going to get very little use of Gower No 1 this winter, so our first matchusageofthefloodlightsisstillsometimeaway.

Finally, welcome to Eastern Suburbs, who feature several former Melville players. We beat Suburbs 1-0 at home last year and 4-1 away though it is sobering to note that every one of the goalscorers in those matches – Oli Colloty, Ryen Lawrence, Stafford DowlingandHarryRose-havenowleftMelville.

Batesy