Eight-time Port Adelaide premiership player Greg Phillips to coach inaugural SMOSH women’s team
A Port Adelaide great will take the reins of an amateur football club’s inaugural women’s team in 2019.
EIGHT-time Port Adelaide premiership player Greg Phillips will coach SMOSH West Lakes’ inaugural A-grade women’s side in the Adelaide Footy League next year.
The club announced the 59-year-old Port great would take the reins on its Facebook page last week.
Phillips’s daughter, Crows AFLW premiership star and ex-WNBA basketballer Erin Phillips, played football at SMOSH as a junior.
Phillips, who lined up in 343 SANFL games with Port and 84 VFL matches with Collingwood, was in the US visiting Erin last week.
But a short statement on SMOSH’s Facebook page said Phillips was “ready for the challenge of coaching women”.
Lions media manager Zac Cook said Phillips had the perfect amount of experience to lead the club’s inaugural women’s side.
Cook said SMOSH hoped to enter a division one team, which Phillips would coach, and a division one reserves side.
“We first approached Greg because we felt Erin (his daughter) had provided us with good support with our junior girls programs and encouraged us to move into a senior women’s team,” Cook said.
“We thought it was fitting to approach Greg first and offer him a coaching position to start us off, knowing he had the credentials.
“He had the right attitude, which is more important for us to start us off with an inaugural women’s team.
“He comes with a good reputation as a person and as a football talent, so we are looking forward to it.”
SMOSH fields under-10, under-12, under-14 and under-16 teams in the SANFL’s junior girls’ competition.
Cook said establishing a women’s team would now give its juniors a pathway.
“We’ve had some really good interest,” Cook said.
“But we are really excited.”
Phillips will return to Adelaide next month to begin his tenure.
For more details or to join the women’s team, contact: girlsdirector@smoshjfc.com.au
