Jason Smith going on as coach of Clayton
After going through 2017 and ‘18 winless, the Clays jumped up to a grand final in 2019, but reappointed coach Jason Smith says there’s plenty more for the proud club to do next year.
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It’s been an uncomfortable 12 months for Jason Smith.
The Clayton coach has been sitting on something painful: a grand final loss when his team played below its best.
As Smith points out, teams defeated in grand finals usually get a chance to redeem themselves the following season.
In the Clays’ case, this year they never had an opportunity to make amends for the loss to Hampton Park in the SFNL Division 3 grand final.
“Normally you dwell on it for a couple of months, then you get into pre-season and then five or six months later you hopefully get another crack at it,’’ Smith was saying this morning.
“That’s all we wanted to do this year. But with the coronavirus and no footy we’ve had to sit on it for a long time. There hasn’t been much light at the end of the tunnel.’’
Smith added: “It would have been different if we’d won that day. You get to sit on a premiership for 18 months, two years.’’
Despite their loss to Hampton Park, the Clays took bold strides in 2019.
Remember, they hadn’t won a senior game for two years, slipping from Division 1 to Division 3, an inglorious run of outs for a club that enjoyed so much success in the decade after its return to the Southern league in 2000.
Former player Smith took charge ahead of 2019 and oversaw what he regarded as “stemming the flow, halting the slide’’.
But he says there’s more to do.
He said the commitment of the players for 2021 was one of the reasons he was going on as coach. The Clays reappointed him this week.
Smith said he had been worried that with a year off the players’ motivation would waver.
“But they’ve all pretty much committed, they all want to jump on board again, which is really good,’’ he said.
“They want to keep going forward and that’s really motivated me. It’s solidified what I’m all about. It makes you feel like you’re doing something right when they’re all ready to go after a year off and can’t wait to get into pre-season again.’’
Smith said the Clays thought of themselves “not as a Division 3 club, and that’s no disrespect to Division 3, because it’s a super-level playing field with those teams at the moment’’.
“We just feel the endgame is getting back up to a standard or a level that the club deserves to be at,’’ he said.
“It’s actually 10 years today that the club won its last flag, in Division 2. We’d been relegated for that year and went straight back up.’’
Clayton’s recruits for 2020 will also be recruits for 2021.
They include three notable returnees: 2018 best and fairest Jordy Collins, 2017 best and fairest runner-up Joel Rigoni and livewire forward Paul Tsoucalas.
Defender Rigoni was elevated to the leadership group this year, as voted on by the players.
Bailey Escreet, signed from Heyfield, will also be back, and the club has fingers crossed that 19-year-old country prospect Fraser Opie will play.
“That’s the demographic we need to push, the younger guys,’’ Smith said.
“We don’t have that junior link with the Under 19s so we need to get youth in the door.’’
In another lifter, premiership player Corey Pearce has joined Smith’s coaching panel.
The coach said there was a good feeling at Haughton Rd.
“The club’s a really strong unit, right across the board, with the men and the women. We’ve got the netball and footy with the girls and when we lost the grand final the girls were just as shattered as the players,’’ Smith said.
“That’s whole tight the club is. We support them, they support us.’’
The respected Bob Caine will lead Clayton into 2021 as president.
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