Former Noble Park champion Stewart Kemperman locked in at Doncaster
AFTER two flags in two years at Berwick, Stewart Kemperman is returning to the Eastern league to coach Division 1 contender Doncaster.
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STEWART Kemperman is back in the league where he made such a handsome reputation as a player.
This time he brings with him the accolade of dual premiership coach.
The former Noble Park champion has been appointed coach of rival Eastern club Doncaster, replacing Andrew Tranquilli.
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The Sharks began circling Kemperman after his surprise departure from Berwick at the end of the season.
As a non-playing coach he led the Wicks to the 2017 and ‘18 premierships in the South East league, only to part ways with the club last month.
Frankston, where Kemperman played before joining Noble, offered him an assistant’s role but Kemperman was keen to continue coaching his own team and agreed to terms with Doncaster.
“Exciting proposition. Can’t wait,’’ he said this afternoon.
“I’ve been around footy long enough to know premierships aren’t won in October and November. There’s a lot of hard work to do and to a degree you need a bit of luck go your way.
“Doncaster has a good list, a list that has the potential, I think, to be successful. But we’ll need to do everything right because each year the compeititon improves by a percentage and if you’re not at the top you’ve got to improve by that plus some.’’
Asked about his exit from Berwick, Kemperman said: “It’s a tricky one to try to explain, because it’s hard for people outside the club to understand it.
“But essentially we had an agreement and the direction they wanted to take the footy club in didn’t line up with what I was hoping to do. It was sort of a situation where I’d have to compromise my style and my beliefs and what I thought would be the right way forward. At the end of the day it wasn’t the right fit. That’s as simple as it is. You shake hands and you move on.
“I’ve still got a lot of love and respect for the guys at the Berwick footy club and will always hold them dear to my heart for what we were able to achieve. But I’ve always understood that any club you play at is bigger than any individual. As hard as it is to swallow and process, that’s the situation we found ourselves in and we move on.’’
Kemperman said he hit it off with new Frankston coach Danny Ryan and thought he could learn from him “but I’ve only coached for two years in my own right and I want to get a bit more experience coaching my own team before I look to try to finetune the technical side of coaching at a level like VFL’’.
The Sharks said Kemperman “beat a strong group of candidates to the position’’.
“Beyond his incredible record, Stewart is a highly respected person within the EFL community and the background endorsements received by the football department made him a clear choice,’’ the club said.
Tranquilli stood down after the Sharks’ straight-sets exit from the finals this year. He had taken Doncaster from Division 3 to Division 1 with a pair of premierships.
He said he was “conscious of my expiry date” after serving in the role for seven seasons.
Doncaster has made the top five for three consecutive years but has a 0-4 record in finals since the start of 2016.
“I really want the next person to embrace what we’ve built, bring their own little touches to it and take it further,” Tranquilli told Leader.
Kemperman, renowned for his lethal left-foot kicking, retired from Noble Park at the end of the 2016 season.
He played in the Bulls’ 2010-11 premierships, served as a playing assistant to Mick Fogarty and was named in their best Eastern league team.
Fogarty said of Kemperman: “I always called him an 80m to 100m player. I used to say this a lot at Noble: he’s the best kick of a football I’ve ever seen. It’s a big call, I know. But I just love the way he moved and delivered.
“I truly believe he would have suited AFL footy the way it’s played nowadays. That’s how highly I rated Stewie.’’
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