Newly re-signed Mangoplah-Cookardinia United-Eastlakes coach Jeremy Rowe wants his playing group to aim high next season.
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Rowe's re-signing was announced at the club's presentation night last Saturday, where teenage forward George Kendall capped off a magnificent year by taking out the best and fairest.
The vote count came down to the final round where Kendall edged out on-baller Nick McCormack by six votes, with Lachie Kendall a further six votes back in third place.
Unfortunately for the Goannas, Kendall will depart the club next season as he looks to pursue university and football elsewhere.
"George will depart the football club and will do so with our blessing," Rowe said.
"We want to make sure that we're really supportive of our juniors going to play at higher standards of footy. At the moment he's tossing up between a few things in regards to uni and football decisions that he's got that may take him towards Canberra or Victoria.
"George will be a massive loss. He's our best and fairest, he's our leading goalkicker and he's a young man that plays in the most difficult position on the ground and he was definitely our match-winner this year. He took a number of games by the scruff of the neck and performed incredibly well so we're under no false illusions that he is going to be very difficult to replace.
"You probably go to the point where you don't try and replace him, like for like, you probably try and add a couple of different avenues to goal and then refine your systems to work around a number of players that can come together and give the same output."
Rowe explained that he was always keen on a second year as coach at the Goannas.
He said the foundation work had been laid and was now looking to refine things to get that extra improvement out of individuals at the club.
Rowe said while he cannot speak for the group, there is no question as to what his ambition is next season.
"There's no way known I'm going to get caught speaking for the group and setting black and white goals in October," he said.
"We've got so much water to go under the bridge between now and the start of next season. There's a lot of variables that can happen and I really want to make sure that the group are behind the goal setting and buying in but I think at the end of the day, every year that goes on without Mangoplah putting an RFL premiership in its cabinet is one more year to that drought.
"Certainly I hope that our goals end up being on the loftier side of things, and they're clearly set with an understanding that they're very, very hard to win, and not only are they very, very hard to win but we're actually in what I believe to be one of the strongest versions of the RFL for quite some time.
"You have the understanding that there's a lot of things that have to go right and a lot of work to be done but I don't want us to ever while I'm there to be turning up and be setting our goals that encompass mid-table type of results. We need to get beyond that and we need to get beyond that now rather than thinking its just going to happen in the future because time passes and these sorts of things just sort themselves out because that's just not the case."
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