By Russell Bennett
ENTERING his final season in charge of his beloved Nar Nar Goon, Clint Williams is hell-bent on going out on top.
The 31-year-old is entering his sixth season at the helm – a coaching record at the club.
But this will hardly be a season of reminiscing the glory days from past seasons. Williams wants to make it a victory march.
The Goon’s players know they can’t rest on their laurels – having gone from 2010 premiers to missing the finals last season.
This year, Williams is employing a range of new strategies to rejuvenate the group and – he hopes – snare his second coaching premiership.
“Last year was absolutely a down year for us,” he said with disappointment in his eyes.
“Right from the start, nothing went right.
“We lost players to injury before the season started and two of our better players – Brett Dore and Matt Wade – went and played in the VFL.”
“When we named a captain on the Thursday night before our first practice match, he broke his leg five minutes into that practice match.
“It started with him and things like that continued all year.”
But Williams would not blame a horror 2011 season on his team’s nightmare injury run. He would not let the side off that lightly.
“There was no doubt that our preparation, due to us winning the competition the year before and celebrating, was behind where it should have been,” he said.
“Basically, for the rest of the year we were chasing our tails right to the point where, with a week or two to go, we were still very much a chance of playing finals but it was one of those years.”
Williams was frustrated with a string of close losses that, ultimately, cost the side a place in the top six.
“I think we had the second best percentage in the league,” he said.
“When we won, we won really well but we dropped a lot of close games and that came back and bit us.
“We won 11 games, which means we lost seven.
“In previous years that has made the finals, particularly with our percentage, but you don’t go from premiers to missing the finals.
“There was also a lot of our own doing that we could control.
“Put it this way, if you’re involved in four or five close games, you’d like to think you could win half of them… but we lost them all.”
But The Goon has gone back to what helped it win the 2010 flag – a testing pre-season camp, both physically and mentally, at Trafalgar.
“We had a lady take us for a leadership and communication workshop in the morning,” Williams said.
“That really just opened up the boys’ eyes to how they speak to each other and how their messages and things they say to each other get interpreted or misinterpreted.
“We had 35 players go on that camp so pretty well everyone got a taste of it.
“In the afternoon it was a heap of hard work, hills and a bit of a commando course and at night time we’d crack open a beer or two and try to bring the younger blokes out of their shells a little bit.
“That’s just as beneficial as the training.”
Williams said the camp was angled towards team-building even more than building a stronger fitness base.
This year’s camp was organised by new club president Tess Noonan – the first female president in The Goon’s history.
“Tess is doing a great job,” Williams said.
“She’s going to take organisation to another level.
“She fully organised and set-up our camp, which went off without a hitch – from getting it booked and organising food and everything, she completely looked after that.” Williams said Noonan was “willing to acknowledge the areas in which she doesn’t have expertise” and utilise the strength of all committee members.
“Tess looks after what she can and what she does well,” he said.
“Myself as the senior coach, you want to know that you’ve got the full support of the committee and she keeps me in the loop on anything and everything that goes on.”
Williams said there could be up to nine teams fighting for six spots in this year’s EDFL finals, with reigning premiers Garfield again the ones to watch.
With that in mind, he wants to give his side every possible advantage leading into arguably his most important season. Williams and former lead assistant, now Tooradin head coach, Tom Hallinan even organised a pre-season scrimmage between their two sides.
“It’s not a practice match, but we’re, basically, practicing our structures against them, Williams explained.
“I’ve just found that when you practice ball-ups and throw-ins and things like that internally with your own people, everyone knows what the other guys are doing. It sort of defeats the purpose.
“We’re going down to Tooradin and we’re going to have the ground marked out and there’s a guy going to video it all for us.
“We’ll do our centre bounce work against them. They’ll have their structures and we’ll have ours.”
Williams said he would play on again next season for The Goon, provided his body holds up and his playing form this year is good enough.
But his long-term aspirations lie in the coach’s chair and he wants to add to his resumé before he hands over the Nar Nar Goon reins.
“It’d be nice to stick another flag up there,” he said.
“One out of six doesn’t sound that good to me.”
