Lancefield is eyeing a jump up the Riddell District ladder this season

After two wins in 2019, Lancefield is eyeing a jump up the Riddell District ladder and is offering a unique incentive scheme to help motivate its players.

Lancefield has set a high bar for season 2021 and is using cash incentives to motivate its players.

After just two wins in 2019, the Tigers are looking for a quick jump up the Riddell District ladder under new coach Tom Waters and have secured a bevy of new recruits.

Jimmy Falcone (Prahran Assumption) and James Wooster (Seymour) have returned to the club.

Harry Taylor, Tom Keaney, Jayden Williams (all Prahran Assumption), Lukas Fellows (Thomastown), Jay Russell (Whittlesea), Tom Atwell (Glenroy) and Stefan Da Riva (Craigieburn) have all come on board.

However, the club won’t be breaking the bank to achieve its goals after rebuilding its financial foundations in recent years.

“There’s a big group that went to Assumption together, they’ve all come to play footy together, we said to the guys we’ve got no money but if you want to play together this is the place to do it,” Waters said.

“Every player will get $50 to play in the seniors and if they get best on it goes up to $200, second best $150, third best $100.

“We’ve made it an incentive thing, if the guys reckon they’re worth the money they’re going to have to play for it.

“The end goal is to have success and win a premiership, there’s no one out there that doesn’t play for that.

“Realistically, not everyone can do it in the first year but I don’t see why we can’t, we’re definitely setting the bar as high as possible.”

Lancefield had a productive pre-season claiming practice match wins over Northern league club Kilmore and Central Highlands outfit Daylesford before going down to Maryborough-Castlemaine side Trentham.

The Tigers had the bye in Round 1 of the RDFL season and Waters said his players were champing at the bit.

The club faces a tough ask first up, hosting 2019 runner-up Wallan fresh off a 83-point thrashing of Romsey.

“There were mixed emotions on the weekend, we had the bye, I wasn’t too worried but when I was looking at the results was thinking how we’ve got another week to go,” Waters said.

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“We’ll have a completely different team to what we had in those three (pre-season) games, we still haven’t had everyone play together yet.

“Our cricketers missed the first two because they were playing finals and then in the third one when they were available we only had two or three of the other guys.

“We’ll definitely know were we sit after this weekend, Wallan and Diggers are the two teams to beat.

“Having Wallan first up is a good test for us and we’re really looking forward to it.”