Den unites ahead of 2022 season

CLUBS all over Geelong are in good spirits with footy season getting ever so closer, but it was a special Monday night training for the Belmont Lions Football Club last week with players of all ages coming together to practice their footy skills.

Seniors coach Nathan Bisset and his assistant Troy Perry coordinated a joint training session between the club’s Geelong and District Football League side and its junior cohort.

Bisset, who was reappointed as Lions head coach for another season in 2021, had done this method of training before at previous clubs he had been associated with.

“The idea to join groups was something that I had picked up at other clubs before Belmont,” Bisset said.

“Getting the juniors to join in on seniors training is just a great way to integrate the club rather than juniors and seniors being segregated from one another.

“As a coach, I like to every now and again change things up a little bit, keep my boys guessing, and this time it just so happened to be the same night juniors were training.”

Kicking, marking and handballing were all on the agenda during training.

Bisset said his players really enjoyed it and it was just a further testament to his old and new players buying into the culture he is trying to build at Belmont for 2022 and onwards.

According to junior football coordinator Brian Coughlan, the session didn’t just put a smile on the face of the players, the parents got a kick out of the night as well.

“The parents there could see how much fun the kids were having with the senior players, it was really a fantastic idea,” Coughlan said.

“The seniors were running line drills involving kicking, marking and handballing, we did picking the ball up off the ground, which is an important skill to learn at a young age. Just the fundamentals that you start to learn at a competitive level.”

From there, the night concluded with a tight-knit communal barbecue cooked by the parents.

Senior players ran the juniors through a number of drills focusing on essential skills.

Junior football at Belmont is growing, however, the club is on the lookout for new players in its under 9s, 10s, 11s footballing age groups.

Parent volunteers for various roles are also welcome and there are spaces for junior netballers too in under 13s, 15s, 17s.

To express your interest, reach out to senior football coordinator Troy Perry on 0417 505 411, junior football coordinator Brian Coughlan on 0421 761 071, or netball director Caitlin Lamont on 0425 646 228.