Reeva’s Christmas Wrap

As we head into the festive season, I thought it would be an opportune time to wish all of our members and supporters a Merry Christmas and a Happy New year. 2024 has been a great year and we are looking forward to that continuing in 2025 and beyond. Also, a good time to provide an update on all things football.

In my last update I alluded to a couple of senior players taking some time on deciding what the future would hold for them. While I would love everyone to continue on reality is that isn’t possible and while there were a number of discussions and scenarios to work through, both Billy Stretch and Chris Curran have decided to step away from SANFL football. They are both outstanding people first and foremost and have been outstanding players and leaders of our football club over a number of years. They retire as 2-time premiership players, and we will certainly miss both of them. We all wish them the best in their futures.

Really pleasingly after announcing some of our other recruits and returning players, adding Karl Finlay to our club is a great result for both the now and the future. Karl still only 23 years old has played over 60 league games and has some big finals games experience as well as representing South Australia against Victoria at the start of last season. He is an outstanding athlete that can play key position roles either end of the ground and we see him playing a big part in our group for a long time to come.

Our 1-3 year returned to training over the past 2 weeks joined by some new faces to the club and 11 out of our u18 program. While training is optional for our senior players (4 year plus) at this point, we are seeing a number of them joining in our sessions which is great to see. They have been all working hard in smaller groups doing programs designed to have them ready to hit the ground running when our full group returns on the 8^th of January. What is exciting for me is the condition of all of our players right across the group. There is certainly a hunger to be even better in 2025 and they are showing that with the work they are doing. Within our training sessions the energy and intensity of our young and new players is infectious, and we have been pleased with our sessions to date. Lots of work to do but a great start point.

Of some of our new players, Patrick Parnell has fitted into the group really well and has been really strong right through the first part of training and will be an exciting addition, Luke Partington has returned looking and moving well, he has been at every session to date and is building nicely. I sense he is setting himself up to play his best football in 2025 and that is really exciting. Jarryd Lyons is settling into life back in Adelaide and will be training from the start of the new year along with Issac Hyatt and Liam Jones when they arrive in Adelaide in the new year.

We have also had some changes to our coaching group and some reshuffling in roles. Shamus Schutt joins our group and will take on our forward line group. We are pleased to add him to our coaching group, Brett Exelby continues as our Senior Assistant Coach as well as taking over our midfield line with Damien Raidis taking over our backline group. Jarrad Millington continues on as our reserves coach and also working across the line groups in our league squad. Tim Gogoll will continue in a development role with some other development coaches potentially added in the near future.      

The past few weeks has seen great numbers of members renewing or signing up for the first time along with a number of lapsed members jumping on board again. This is great to see, we would love to see our membership force continue to grow, I’ve left a link below so you can sign up if you haven’t just yet. There are plenty of exciting things in the pipeline for 2025, the one thing we can all be certain of is we will have a playing group that is ready to go come late March. Our players, coaches and football staff can’t wait for the opportunity ahead. Having the Bay army right behind us will make it even more exciting

Hunting History in 2025! Join us now! 

GO THE BAY’S

Darren Reeves

Senior Coach