Best & Fairest Award Winner: Ben Duscher
Leading Goal Kickers: Matthew Little – 50 goals, Tory Dickson – 48 goals, Ariel Steinberg – 25 goals
Peter Jackson VFL Team of the Year 2011: Matthew Little (Forward)
2011 Draftee’s: Sam Dunnell (St Kilda), Shane Biggs (Sydney Swans), Tom Campbell (Western Bulldogs), Tory Dickson (Western Bulldogs)
Finished 2011 Season: 7th (9 wins – 9 losses)
2012 Coach: Hayden Skipworth (1st year)
Aligned AFL Club: Essendon FC
IN’s:
Rick Ladson – Hawthorn, Jordan Williams – Hawthorn, Wayne Schultz – Castlemaine
OUT’s:
Pierce Liddle (NT), James Papalia, Chris Stewart, Shane Page, Lachlan Delahunty (Frankston VFL), Sam O’Brien & Anthony Dennis.
Practice Matches:
Geelong 9.11.65 def Bendigo FC 4.3.27
Bendigo 19-22-132 def. North Ballarat 12-5-77
Hayden Skipworth joins the Team
Bendigo Football Club, along with their aligned AFL side Essendon, has appointed a new Senior Coach for their VFL Team in 2012. Hayden Skipworth, former AFL footballer, will be replacing Shannon Grant who held this role for two years before moving on to the Western Bulldogs as an Assistant Coach.
In his playing days, Skipworth has recorded 44 games for Adelaide and 11 for Essendon. In 2007 & 2008, Hayden played at the Bendigo Football Club in which time he won a Best & Fairest for the Club.
Skipworth has been in a development role with the Club since his retirement in 2009. The experience he has gained in developing young players should assist him in his duties as Bendigo’s Coach.
Coach’s Comment:
I’m confident we’ll be more than competitive this season, our side is more than capable of playing finals football again in season 2012.
We have enjoyed a great pre-season, with the only negative being losing Justin Maddern in the early games of the season to a hand injury.
Other than Justin we have a really healthy list of players at the moment so if everything goes to plan, we should be able to field a really strong side for the season opener.
I’ve really enjoyed watching the guys learn and develop over the pre-season and it's going to be exciting to see how far we can go this season.
We lost five players during the off-season, with Sam Dunell, Shane Biggs, Tom Campbell, Tory Dickson and Jack Redpath all leaving to play at AFL clubs, both the club and myself wish them all well in their endeavors to have a long and successful AFL career. The VFL is a very strong breeding ground for AFL clubs.
I’m very confident we’ve got a number of strong additions, which will be a positive for the side.
Thanks to Graham Pratt we have added Rick Ladson, who is a Hawthorn premiership player and brings some great experience to our list and Jordan Williams who played a couple of years with Rick at Hawthorn and he was pretty keen to get back in the AFL system, so he is training very hard.
The boys are gelling together well and our energy is now focused on preparation for our first match for 2012, Round Two against Frankston
– Hayden Skipworth
Next Preview: Northern Blues
Click below for Bendigo's squad for 2012
Last Modified on 21/03/2012 17:06