Eastern Football League: Knox coach speaks out about keeping players engaged and in touch
He’s yet to oversee an official match for this Eastern league Division 2 outfit, but this first-year coach has kept a close eye on his group all in the name of mental health and well-being.
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Knox coach Wayne Van Der Ross has spoken of the importance of his club continuing to hit the training track, despite the Eastern league season being officially called off.
Van Der Ross succeeded Falcons premiership mentor David Madigan at the end of last season and is yet to oversee an official senior match for the Division 2 outfit.
“At the moment, we are currently still training,” Van Der Ross said.
“Ever since everything’s happened, we’ve continued to train, once a week, every Thursday. We’re getting roughly about 20-25 (players), and we’re making the most of it really.”
Van Der Ross said mental health and well-being remained his No. 1 priority as the club navigates its way through the shutdown.
“The main point of training still was about the welfare of the boys and to keep them connected,” he said.
“Because now that they’re not having it (football on the weekends), that connection and all those things, I just thought it was really important for the boys to continue that on.
“If you stop now, we won’t hear from them or see them until October and at the moment, you try to touch base with everyone and see how they’re going, but you don’t know how their headspace is, and how this is affecting them.”
The club was set to compete in Division 2 this season – the league’s third tier – suffering relegation after finishing on the bottom of the Division 1 ladder last season.
The Falcons have now turned their attention to planning for next season, among a host of unknown factors.
“The next step for us now really is to get everyone back together, and see where they’re at and talk about next year and start planning,” Van Der Ross said.
“I’ve started planning for next year, but there’s a lot of unknowns we can’t control.
“I think the biggest thing is probably not knowing what the salary cap’s going to be next year. There’s talk of either it being 50 per cent or 30 per cent down on this year.
“Once that gets put out there, we can work on player contracts … but everyone’s in the same boat.”
Van Der Ross said while the opportunity to train would continue to provide an outlet for his players, some had opted not to.
“I’ve been keeping in touch with pretty much all of the players,” he said.
“Some of them said to me when we went back to training ‘Look, we’re not going to train because we don’t know if we’re going to play’. I thought that’s fair enough … I totally understand that and in that sense some boys went off and worked Saturdays.”
Despite itching to oversee his first season at the helm, Van Der Ross, who played his junior and senior football with Knox, is remaining positive and said the season shutdown would have its benefits for the club’s older players.
“There’s so many words I can think of – frustrating, disappointing, but we can’t control it,” he said.
“It is what it is, and it’s the circumstances we’ve got to deal with. We can’t dwell on it, we move on, we plan for next year and we stay positive and hopefully everything gets back to normality sooner rather than later and we do have a season next year.
“In hindsight, it’s good for some of the older blokes – the body gets refreshed, the mind gets cleared and all those injuries and niggles go away and they come back to pre-season better.”
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