FARRER FILES: BARELLAN

BARELLAN

2015 Finish: 9th

Home & Away: 1 win; 15 losses

Club Best & Fairest: Matt Irvin

Telstra Rising Star: Mitch Conlan (also named Farrer League Rising Star for 2015)

Snapshot:

Returning to the Farrer League was a massive undertaking for the Two Blues and just pulling together the switch from the Northern Riverina League was a serious achievement in itself. Without a long lead-in time to be particularly active in recruitment, the focus was on ensuring as many local players as possible were back in the Barellan strip. In the opening round, premiers-in-the-making, The Rock-Yerong Creek, made sure Barellan knew what they were up against, dishing out a hiding. But coach Will Overs insisted his team hold their heads high as they walked off, aware that just by fielding two football teams and four netball grades in the Farrer League, they’d taken the first steps back into the club’s future.

The club enjoyed its first win when overcoming CSU at Barellan in the back half of the season, and ultimately finished with the wooden spoon on percentage only.

Overs couldn’t fault his players’ attitude in a long season.

“I’ve heard a few guys (outside the club) saying we do play with plenty of pride and that’s the most important thing to me,” he said. “There’s a strong history at Barellan – of premierships and good players – so just the face we played with pride, and playing with a bunch of good mates.”

The focus now is on taking the next step in the club’s revival and building a competitive list, while the club’s juniors hope to the South West League in a bid to secure a long-term future.

Highlights:

There’s nothing like winning and in a lean season the celebrations of a sole victory were borne on the 4th of July:

Barellan 17.9 (111)

CSU 9.9 (63)

“That was unreal, mate,” Overs said of the round 12 game at Barellan.

“Probably reward for effort, that’s what was good about it. We worked reasonably hard. We’re in no doubt we’ve got to work a lot harder but that was great.

“It was a relief to get a win for the season and we enjoyed it. We all had a spring in the step for the week.”

The Two Blues also had reason to cheer at the Clear Medal night, celebrating an A-grade Netball League Medallist (Helen Overs) and a Football Rising Star (Mitch Conlan).

But the real highlight was simply being back in the competition, with gratitude and relief the overall sentiment at having taken the first steps in ensuring the future of the club.

“We were very happy with our year – our membership doubled and the whole community got behind us,” said president Mark Kenny.

“We had great gates and the functions were really good.”

Overs said the support of the community and supporters was vital in what would have been a frustrating season at times for the players.

It just helped us out. Even though the results may not have been in our favour, we still had the support,” he said.

Lowlights:

With an overall air of encouragement around their return to a stronger league, the club isn’t looking to highlight too many disappointments about their season.

Kenny reflected that injuries didn’t help their hopes of finding a couple more wins but Overs insisted he was taking a positive view of the season given their circumstances.

Naturally, finishing with the wooden spoon is always a lowlight regardless of the circumstances and, in truth, it could’ve been avoided if the damage had been limited in just a couple more games.

Even going into the final round of the season, Barellan had the opportunity to consign the Bushpigs to last but, in difficult circumstances following a death in their community, they struggled against a Northern Jets side chasing a big score in the hope of making the finals.

In the end, it was a mere 1.5% difference that saw CSU finish eight and Barellan ninth but the Two Blues had done well to even field a team in that last round amid a family tragedy hitting the playing group.

Surprise Packet:

It wasn’t that great a surprise that Matt Irvin was the club’s best and fairest but he earned high praise from around the club for the way the centre half-back went about his footy.

“Matt Irvin was a huge surprise for me,” Over said. “I mean, I knew he was a good player but the level he got to and the way he sustained it…”

Irvin was named in the club’s best a staggering 14 times in his 16 games.

Another key defender, Jeff Mickan, faced a huge task each week against some of the best forwards in the region.

The veteran set a great example for Barellan’s young players looking to learn how to play with consistency.

The fullback, now closer to 40 than 30, was a joint runner-up with Jed Hillman behind Irvin in the club’s best and fairest.

“Jeffrey Mickan, he turned in week in week out,” Overs said.

“The thing with Jeff is his best and worst’s not far apart and he could keep producing like that week in, week out.”

Areas to improve:

After the excitement and acknowledgement of what their return to the Farrer League means, Barellan’s challenge now is to create a competitive unit which will challenge for wins in almost every game.

Irvin, Mickan and Hillman showed the way, along with the coach, and Overs wants to see more players matching those efforts.

“We had six, seven, eight blokes performing every week, but we need to do a bit more (across the board) each week. We need to develop into quality Farrer League footballers.”

The average score in the Two Blues losses was 130 to 33 and reducing the magnitude of most of those is Overs’ priority.

“As a unit, I suppose it takes a good year of footy to understand how the coach wants you to play,” he said.

“We must improve our defensive game – our reaction time from offence to defence isn’t good enough. We haven’t got a power forward at this stage so our transition has to be better to limit teams kicking huge scores.

“The whole defensive game, we’ve got to be really good at the footy and become a defensively tight unit… have pride in the fact that your bloke hasn’t got the ball as much as you have, and that comes back to fitness too.”

But improvement to get near the standard of Farrer League finals contenders (which this season included every team bar CSU and Barellan) is likely to require the injection of talent. A sprinkling of experienced, classy footballers who can provide some drive out of the middle and give the team a few more players to get behind.

What to look forward to:

It remains to be seen who Barellan can attract to the club, but they’ll bear close watching.

“We’re not going out there recruiting a heap of players, we only want 3 or 4,” Kenny said.

He is confident the club won’t lose too many currently players, saying almost everyone has signalled their intention to come back next season.

Kenny’s most interested in seeing how those current players develop after one full season in the League under their belt.

“To see more improvement in the boys (is what I’m looking forward to). If we can pick up three or four, and then see the continued improvement in our own players.”

In the slightly longer term, Barellan have been granted conditional approval to South West Juniors, on the proviso they can show they’ll be able to field two football teams, Under 11 and Under 15, as well as three netball teams.

“I’m really looking forward to seeing the young guys develop,” Overs said.

“I’m a huge believer that you have to have good young people around your club to remain sustainable and I believe we have that. But to maintain it we have to have juniors and we’re looking forward to that, and remaining a force.”

Overs said they have some irons in the fire for recruitment, but nothing to announce just yet.

“I’m quite confident that any player we have come to our club, they’ll be embraced not just by the club but by our community.

“And on the field, they won’t be left to do it themselves. When we get someone to the club we make them feel like one of our group, that’s a huge thing.”