EFL: Surrey Park coach David Jensen set to lead club in 2021
EFL Division 4 outfit Surrey Park has secured its coach for the next two seasons, while a changing of the guard on-field has been earmarked to take the club forward...
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First-year Surrey Park coach David Jensen is set to lead the club again in 2021, as the Division 4 outfit looks to its youth to return it to finals.
Jensen succeeded outgoing coach Scott Hamill at the end of 2019 but is yet to oversee an official match at the Panthers’ helm.
Both Jensen and the club have “verbally” met an agreement on his coaching position for the next two years.
“Basically, I had a two-year contract and they wiped this year, so it’ll still be a two-year contract from 2021 which was nice of them to do that,” Jensen said.
Club champion Michael Paolini has hung up the boots after the coronavirus forced season shutdown put paid to a final year of footy. After a storied career across Doncaster and Surrey Park, the club stalwart has slotted into the role of recruiting manager.
“Old father time has caught up with him unfortunately, his body’s no good and his work’s really busy as well,” Jensen said.
“He was going to be playing assistant coach in the season that could have been but he played a practice match and you could tell then he wasn’t right.
“He can’t do the coaching role because of work being busy, but he still wants to help the club, so the recruiting role is something that we hope suits him.
“Plus, with his connections, he knows everyone in every division in every competition, so it could be good for us.”
The majority of the list has recommitted for 2021 after the club targeted youth last off-season.
Jensen said the core group of players have a “burning desire” to hit the park again following a first-week exit from the 2019 Division 4 finals at the hands of Fairpark, in the Panthers’ first finals appearance in 13 years.
“From the core group of guys that have been there for a while, pretty much all of them have said they’ve got that burning desire, and they were disappointed that the season didn’t get underway because they felt that they’d improved again with the players we’d picked up,” he said.
While the Panthers are set to blood youth next season, a “couple of key position players” are on Jensen’s wishlist, but he believes the expected $50,000 Division 4 salary cap from 2021 would make it tough to add new names having already signed the bulk of the list.
“There’s a few under-19s boys that’ll be under-19s next year, there’ll be a couple of good players in there that we’ll probably have a look at blooding,” Jensen said.
“With the salary cap, it’s going to be really difficult to recruit … plus we’ve re-signed almost everybody so there’s not much wiggle room.
“It’s more about getting the young blokes through but we really want to improve our relationship between the junior club and senior club and build a pathway program for these kids to want to come through.
“We understand totally that the better ones may want to play a higher standard of footy, but if we can build a culture and build the program first, then hopefully things grow from there.”
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