Story by Mitch Brown
With such a prolific representation in the Nationals Championships this season for the Dandenong Stingrays, the team selectors were faced with a problem.
Nearly a third of the initial 50-man Vic Country squad was made up of Stingrays players - a confirmation of the magnitude of talent that Dandenong has to offer this year.
However with so many Stingrays out of action for the Nationals games, this meant that there was opportunity for some of Dandenong’s younger rising stars to step up and make their mark on the TAC Cup stage.
In the past three matches, no fewer than six young players have pulled on a Stingray jumper for the first time: Jordan Stewart, Philip Raso, Mason De Wit, Kyle Beveridge, Max Kleverkamp and Ryan Odell have all played important roles in guiding the Stingrays through an undefeated month.
“Because we’ve lost so many great players to Nationals, it does give some of the guys that opportunity to get a taste - we see it as a great feather in their cap, to be able to play Stingrays footy,”said senior coach Craig Black on Saturday.
“A lot of these kids, they train really hard, and they’re deserving of that opportunity.”
One such player is Max Kleverkamp, who at just seventeen has already debuted for the Stingrays and has his eyes set on more games this season.
When Blackie told me I was going to be getting a game, I was pretty excited. I’ve been in the Stingrays program since under-14s, so it was great to get picked.
“At the moment I’m working on getting a bit stronger and really making sure I’m going in for those third and fourth efforts, so if I can keep doing that it should be good.”
While many of this season’s debutants have been involved in the Dandenong Southern Stingrays development program for years, the story of Ryan Odell, who played his first game this weekend against the Gippsland Power, is a little bit different.
After having moved on from the Stingrays program several years ago, to play seniors footy over at the Mornington Bulldogs Football Club, Odell’s work through the midfield caught the eye of Bulldogs senior coach Chris Holcombe, who recommended to the Stingrays that Odell be given a chance to train at Shepley Oval.
Fast forward a few weeks, and after impressing at training, Odell was notified on Thursday night that he’d been included in the Stingrays’starting 22 for the match on Saturday - an announcement which caught Odell off guard.
“It was weird cause I’d been a bit crook, and I missed Thursday night training at Mornington, so Chris called me up, and I assumed he wanted to know if I was going to be able to play for Mornington this weekend, and he said ‘actually nah mate, you’ve got a Stingrays game.’
“I was pretty nervous, lots of things going through my head,”he admits. “Managed to ease into it though, I really enjoyed it.”
Odell and Kleverkamp joined Robert Turnbull in the middle of the water-soaked song huddle as the ‘first-gamers’after their 21-point win over Gippsland on Saturday, however Turnbull played one game for the Stingrays last season as a fresh-faced 16-year-old, and has been working hard to reclaim a place ever since.
“I’d been looking for an opportunity for a while, I’ve really been focusing on my disposal at the moment, making sure I can be as efficient as I can, so it’s great to be rewarded.”
Turnbull, Kleverkamp and Odell now face a tough week at training to retain their positions, under threat of a wealth of possible returns, such as the recently-injured Darcy Warke, along with Nationals representatives Brandon White, Gach Nyuon, Mitch Cox, Jacob Weitering, Thomas Glen, Kieran Collins and Daniel Capiron, for Dandenong’s 1st-vs-2nd battle with North Ballarat this coming week.
Last Modified on 18/06/2015 23:33