EFNL 2024: Ex-Melbourne co-captain Jack Grimes to oversee Warrandyte pre-season ahead of Division 4 move

Pre-season is set for a shake-up at relegated Eastern league club Warrandyte with the arrival of an ex-AFL Demon. And there’s also been a swag of other key signings ...

Former Melbourne co-captain Jack Grimes will oversee Warrandyte’s pre-season. AAP Image/Tony McDonough)

A former Melbourne captain is among a package of recruits at Warrandyte as the Eastern league club prepares for a new division – but he won’t be taking the field.

Ex-AFL defender Jack Grimes will oversee the Bloods’ pre-season ahead of their move into Division 4 following a campaign yielding just two wins and relegation.

Grimes, who played 100 matches for the Demons from 2008 to 2016 and co-captained the club for three seasons, has plied his trade as a personal trainer in the years since his AFL career finished.

And his latest business venture struck a chord with Warrandyte senior coach and brother-in-law, Paul Donahoo, in the club’s bid to bounce back.

“Of recent times he’s started up a business – he’s been a PT for a number of years but in the last 12 months he’s turned to football-focused (programs), and it’s called JJ’s High Performance,” Donahoo said of Grimes, who played at Warrandyte in 2019.

“It’s really aimed at a (football specific) program that footballers can develop with and really grow with, which there’s not a lot out there that do. So, to be able to have his expertise, ideas and brains in what we’re doing in pre-season will hopefully drive us to a different level.

“Things have changed a lot (in football), Jack’s right into it, he knows all the ins and outs.

“As a coach, one of the things we’ve recognised we need to be better at is getting some more resources around me, and this just helps massively.”

On the field, a Lancefield pair headlines the Bloods’ signing haul.

Key defender Luke Fellows is set to straighten the spine, while midfielder and half-forward Alex Simpson joins the club after topping the goalkicking across the past two seasons. The Assumption College product also had stops at Seymour and Prahran.

Tall defender Caleb Rudd has also put pen to paper, arriving from Southern outfit Chadstone alongside crafty small forward Ben Ogilvie, while versatile talent Jasper Young has signed from Cheltenham.

The coach said the new names would inject much-needed experience to a young group.

“We’ve got a very young group and one of the key things we were looking at to help us on the way down to Division 4 was a bit of experience,” Donahoo said.

“‘Sheepy’, as Alex Simpson is known, I played with him in my days at Prahran (a decade ago) when he was a kid, but he’s had some time away in the country and he’s a very talented player, smart with good skills and loves to sneak forward and kick a goal.

“He’ll fit in really well and add some valuable experience which we wanted to look at.”

Donahoo added of Fellows: “We need a key defender, he’s a guy that can play a lockdown role on the bigger guys, he can intercept and he can run off and attack.

“A real quality player to add to our backline who can hopefully trouble some of those bigger forwards in Division 4.”

EFNL 2024: Alex Simpson (right) has signed at Warrandyte. Picture: Supplied

Donahoo said while the drop to Division 4 wasn’t ideal, it was hoped to be a short stay with an emerging group.

“We’d rather not be in Division 4, but it is what it is,” he said.

“We knew with a few games to go this year that we were going down so we had plenty of time to get our heads around it.

“The aim is to not be down there for too long, but we’ve got to understand we’ve got a young group of players – eight this year were still eligible for under-17s and ‘19s that played a fair bit of senior footy.

“The future’s bright but we’ve got to put time into those.”

The coach declared a return to finals was on the agenda.

“The players would attest that they enjoyed their year this year, we’ve had to reset a little bit culturally, we did that, had some fun and we’ve signed up 90 per cent of the list,” Donahoo said.

“At the end of the day you play footy to win games of footy, so let’s go out there, have some fun and enjoy being around the footy club but winning a few extra games helps as well.

“Where that sits in the division we don’t know, but we would hope that we’re playing finals and giving ourselves every chance to bounce back into a Division 3 club.”