ADRIAN Pavese will return for a second year in charge of Griffith.
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The Riverina League coaching jigsaw is complete after Pavese’s appointment as the Swans’ senior coach was finalised last week.
Pavese is currently overseeing Greater Western Sydney’s (GWS) AFL Women’s team’s pre-season as part of his new role as assistant coach.
But after sorting out his commitments with the Giants, Pavese has been able to commit to a second season at Griffith.
“It’s exciting,” Pavese said.
“We’ve obviously had a couple of losses...but with the signing of Brent Arho, good quality local kids coming back like Toby Blissett and Luke Shannon and holding onto 90 per cent of our list, things are looking promising.”
After leading Griffith to their first finals appearance in a decade this year, Pavese wants to go further in 2017.
“We want to go deep,” he said.
“We definitely don’t want last year to be a one-year wonder. We want to be playing finals and we want that to be the normal, not the abnormal.
“We’ve wrestled that demon to a point and it’s up to the players now, we want to go deep, and really deep.”
Griffith landed the big off-season signing of full-forward Brent Arho, while they have added Luke Shannon, Jacob Barrington and Toby Blissett.
In further good news, experienced defenders Richard Malone and Che Jenkins will return after time off.
The club also hopes to blood a lot of their under 17 premiership team.
A big loss will be young ruckman Nathan Richards. He is set to relocate to Sydney in a bid to increase his chances of being drafted at the end of next year.
The Swans will also be without club champion Mick Duncan for the first time in more than a decade after he moved to the Gold Coast, while key forward Alex Birch has moved to Melbourne.
Griffith started pre-season training earlier this month and have averaged 25 on the track under senior assistant coach Will Griggs.
Pavese still hopes to add a couple more new faces to the Swans’ list.
“We’re still waiting on people blowing into town, which normally happens,” he said.
“That and working with our premiership 17s that are coming up.”
Griffith start next season with a home game against arch-rival Leeton-Whitton on April 22.