MPNFL: Sorrento targets youth as it continues to recruit for the 2020 season
Sorrento has been known to recruit ex-AFL players, but it won’t be happening this off-season. Here’s why.
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Sorrento has no interest in recruiting discarded AFL players, conceding it hasn’t worked for it in recent seasons.
Sharks vice president and head of recruiting Anthony Ring says the club was going down the youth path with its recruiting as it chased an elusive premiership after back-to-back narrow grand final defeats.
“We’re trying to stay away from getting the 33, 34-year-old ex-AFL players and trying to get the 23 to 25-year-olds who just didn’t quite make it that we can get five years out of,” Ring said.
“It hasn’t worked for us the last few years...and you chew up so many points and so much out of your salary cap and when they break down you’re in strife.
“So we’ve kind of decided this year to go down that path of getting guys who are still supremely talented footy players.”
Hawthorn premiership player Ryan Schoenmakers was linked with Sorrento after announcing his retirement from the AFL last month but Ring quashed the rumour.
“We haven’t even spoken to him,” he said.
“There are people obviously connected to him at the footy club — Mitch (Hallahan) and (Luke) Lowden played footy with him — and it would be quite easy to set up a meeting and we haven’t even gone down that path.”
Already, Sorrento has signed 22-year-old Frankston Dolphins and Mt Eliza midfielder Robbie Turnbull and Mt Eliza U19 and reserves premiership player Nathan Ryan.
Ring said another key signing was imminent, with Sorrento having its eye on two prospective recruits — “a big and a small” — in their early 20s with VFL experience.
“We are deciding who we would like, who would be a bigger asset for our footy club, long term more than anything,” Ring said.
Former Edi-Asp coach Graeme Yeats has joined Sorrento as assistant coach to work closely with playing-coach Luke Tapscott.
Yeats will have a major match-day role while Tapscott plays.
“It’s a good fit for me,” Yeats said.
“They are really passionate about being successful so that rubs off on me as well. And they’ve got great people involved down there.’’
Yeats said he and Tapscott talked footy for about two hours over a few beers recently and then agreed to join forces.
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“It was good fun talking to him about footy and, I guess, our philosophies and how we can see it working,” Yeats said.
“I’m really looking forward to a new challenge so it will be good fun.”