SFNL: Hallam has secured an experienced league medal winner ahead of the 2025 season
A Southern league premiership frontrunner has swooped in on a league medal winner in an off-season signing coup. Here are the details.
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The Hawks and their latest recruit are ready to soar in 2025.
Despite sensing the need for few changes this off-season, Southern league Division 4 grand finalist Hallam has added league medal winner Anthony Bernardo.
The experienced midfielder, who crosses from Seville, won the Outer East Division 1 top gong in the shortened 2021 season, polling an impressive 11 votes in only eight games.
Bernardo also has club best and fairests to his name at Officer and Eastern league club Chirnside Park.
Hallam president Jack Sharlassian said the Hawks were looking forward to adding Bernardo’s experience to their young midfield.
“We played him when he was at Officer and since then we’ve had a good relationship with him, stayed in constant chat,” he said.
“We offered him and his young family the opportunity to play closer to home.
“Like a lot of the sides in Div 4, we’re a younger brigade with a lot of potential, he has been around a long time, played a high standard and won a plethora of awards.
“He’s going to assist Tom (coach Tom Dalton) in helping out game plans, structures and that’s all aside from what he brings on the field.”
The Hawks have retained 21 of the 22 players they fielded in this year’s grand final.
They’ve backed in the group that got them within 21 points of a premiership and have tried to add sprinklings of experience to lift the group as a whole.
“We’ve kept up the same list, kept our ducks in a row but Bernardo is a pretty handy signing,” he said.
“There’s a few guys coming back who are handy pick-ups, there’s nothing too outrageous but hopefully they lift everyone else up.
“We didn’t think we were that far off, Hampton was obviously the team to beat but we were in it at half time and rolled them earlier in the year.
“We are still a young side, a young midfield so we didn’t think we needed to change a lot.”
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