Sports Journalist Rob Waters in the deep end

ROB Waters has been at the elite game's coalface an awful long time as a footy journalist.

ROB Waters has been at the elite game's coalface an awful long time.

The veteran footy journalist hasn't been in Kyneton quite so long - just 18 months as it goes - but long enough to know the town needs a club of its own.

Waters, the senior AFL reporter at Network Ten and a country boy at heart as a former Hamilton resident, traded a lengthy commute for a country lifestyle with wife, Sally, and girls, Emily and Julia, not long after his beloved Magpies broke a 21-year premiership drought.

But while his Magpies were flying, a country footy club in crisis was struggling just streets away from Waters' new digs.

And after Kyneton bled its way through another tumultuous Bendigo Football League season, city hall ran out of patience and condemned the Tigers to a one-year senior recess.

The sounds of top-level football will not be heard at Kyneton Showgrounds this winter, but already the resolute townsfolk have the wheels spinning for a triumphant return next year.

It all began with a steering committee, a brains trust comprising the town's influential and determined residents, but it wasn't long before Waters was being touted as a candidate to replace outgoing president Cello Matricardi.

"Kyneton's a really vibrant place with a great variety of people from all walks of life," Waters said. "There are city slickers like me and people who've lived there all their life, so there's heaps of opportunity for a good footy club.

"That's why I've got involved. I think the place deserves a good, strong footy club."

The new man at the helm won't even ask about the past.

"I'm not really interested because it's not what matters now. We've just got to get on with it. We're in the situation we are in and we can only move forward."

Waters has nominated finding a senior coach as his foremost task and he knows the decision could be one of the club's most crucial in its history.

Derrick Filo, a Tigers champion and Bendigo FL revered figure, will not return as senior coach of Kyneton but is working feverishly in the back room to support Waters and his board.

It was Filo who was adamant last year that Kyneton needed a warrior-like playing coach to steer the club away from shipwreck, but the Michelsen Medal-winner and two-time Kyneton premiership coach is warming to the idea of a non-playing boss.

"It's a funny one. I always believed that we needed a playing coach," Filo said.

"I don't think you close the door on any viable option, but at this point it might be a non-playing coach who has the time and lots of contacts to do all the recruiting and planning.

"It's certainly a big challenge, but if you could pull it off the rewards would be outstanding."

And Waters too is spruiking the allure of being Kyneton's pied piper.

"Imagine if you're the coach who turns Kyneton around. The coaching world is then your oyster, surely."

Kyneton will spend the winter fighting to attract senior-standard footballers and recapture the many homegrown stars who have gone elsewhere.

"Prospective players should see a vibrant board with a terrific governance structure, a clear business plan and a club that's full of ambition to succeed," Waters said.

And Filo's bullish, too.

"Everyone talks about us needing to change the culture, but we now have an opportunity to build the culture."