RECORD FEATURE: COOLAMON HOPPERS

On a sunny Sunday afternoon at Kindra Park, two teenagers sit watching reserve grade as the Hoppers take on Wagga Tigers.
Liam Delahunty and Ryan Allen have made Coolamon the talk of the under 15s Australian rules community after being selected in the All Australian school side at the national championships. It was rare enough to have two players from one small town in the NSW side so it certainly defied all sorts of odds to provide two All Australians.
Liam was NSW’s player of the carnival after three best-on-ground performances and 11 goals.
“The coaches just said back yourself and your ability and if you’re good enough you’ll show it,” Liam said. “And work hard.”
Ryan – an on-baller or half-back-flanker – was best-on in two games to underline his case for All Australian selection.
“That was a real surprise actually making that,” he says. “It was probably the first time I’ve really performed well at a high level so I really surprised myself.”
The boys have grown up around the Coolamon footy club. They spent the pre-season training with the Hoppers seniors and said the stint learning from Matt Hard and his players helped stand them in good stead.
For AFL inspiration, Liam looks to Nick Riewoldt and Lance Franklin while Ryan loves the way Luke Hodge goes about his footy. But if they get to fulfil the dream of playing AFL themselves, they might make Marshal Macauley a household name. The Hoppers backman is the one who springs to mind when asked who they love to watch and learn from at Coolamon.
Ryan: “I look up to Marshal Macauley. He’s a gun. I just like the way he goes about it. He works hard during the pre-season and it really shows in his game during the season.”
Liam: “Yeah, Marshal, I think he works hard. It’s good. His work-rate, it’s something to look out for.”
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Marshal Macauley is only 23 but he’s a player of influence at Coolamon particularly in a year of development. A handful of players in the senior team could still be playing under 17s and almost as many again are only a year or two older. He says players like Mitch McKelvie, Matt McGowan, Luke Redfern, Nick Curran, Steve Senior, Harry Fitzsimmons, Will Graetz bring plenty to the first grade side themselves.
“It is fun,” Macauley says. “We’re not going that well but they bring a lot of enthusiasm. We get beaten on the weekend but they’re back to being happy again during the week. It’s good.”
If Macauley’s an elder statesman and inspiration, so too are some of the blokes he learnt from.
“Oxy (Jamie Maddox) – he’s not that old. Matty Hard. Luke Maloney. Benny Edyvean. They’re all still around the club,” Macauley says.
He realises he was fortunate to come of age in a successful era at Coolamon and his teammates taught him “You’ve really got to take the game on, more than anything, or you’ll get left behind.”
That’s the message too of Coolamon’s under 17s coach Rick Fitzsimmons. The focus is on putting time into all of his players, many of whom will go on to be part of the backbone of the club – as first grade stars, reliable reserve graders, good clubmen or long-term committeemen. Or all of the above. And it starts with one thing.
“Give them confidence, give them support,” Rick says.
“We’ve got boys here that take the game on now, and are marking, and at the start of the year they didn’t have that confidence. As I said to them, the biggest risk is not taking a risk at all. Take the game on. You won’t get criticised for having a go.
“Confidence is a wonderful thing. Once you get going, it affects you through the whole club.”
That’s exactly the coach’s message at three-quarter-time as Coolamon’s under 17s lead second-placed Wagga Tigers and threaten a huge upset. The huddle is surrounded by Hoppers first graders who listen as Fitzsimmons fires up his troops. The senior players ride every bump, mark and kick in the final quarter, and are as devastated as the blokes on the ground when they fall three points short.
“They all come into the sheds after the game and I said to the boys, ‘You mightn’t have got the four points but you earnt a lot of respect today – from the opposition, and the senior players and that’s why they’re in here supporting you now,'” Fitzsimmons says.
The club has a heavy focus on mentoring and development. At the same huddle, Ben Masterson – injured and running the water for his teammates – takes The Record aside for a quiet word: “Senior blokes? They’re unbelievable. Just with our development going into senior footy. Blokes like Matt Hard’s probably at the top of that, telling us what we need to do and how we need to get there,” Masterson says. “I do a lot of work with Ryan Chamberlain and Marshall Macauley, in the bacline. Another good person is Jamie Maddox … They’re my mentors.”
Maddox celebrated his 200th game for the club this season. Hard has been virtually his only coach.
“The main thing he taught me were consistency week in, week out. Trying to be a good player each week rather than being up and down which I was when I first started my career. So I tend to pride myself on being consistent.”
The senior coach has been around long enough to influence at least two generations… starting with the Maddoxes and Chamberlains and Macauleys (and any number of other players throughout the Riverina and Farrer League) who are now providing that guidance to their teammates.
Proud and competitive, Hard won’t say he’s enjoying everything about a season when they’re not in contention. But there is a lot to like.
“It’s been a real developing year and we knew that at the start and knew what we wanted to achieve,” Hard says. “You still get your frustrations from day to day and week to week but we’re not looking at our year as far as wins and losses go, we’re just trying to build for a strong future.
“You’re trying to teach kids and that’s probably the most enjoyable part of your job. You probably lose focus on that all too often because it is on the wins and losses, but when you’ve got a young group that are keen to learn and really buy into what the club’s trying to put ahead, it’s very rewarding. It’s getting young boys into men. It’s good fun.”
Hard says his senior players understand their responsibility in educating juniors. He reckons it’s put a spring in their step and that “they’re as good a teachers as anybody.”
And having Fitzsimmons teaching their 17s is a stroke of luck: “We’re very fortunate there to have a good footy brain getting them through that stage.”
Fitzsimmons says they work together, and he’s still learning himself.
“Even myself, I talk to Matt pretty regularly about how we’re tracking, what he reckons,” he says. “I’m older than Matt, but you’re never too old to learn.”
Rick says it was son Harry who pushed him forward to coach when the club needed one at the start of the year. If that was throwing him under the bus, Rick soon found himself driving one – bringing Wagga-based kids out to training during the week.
“At the start of the year I thought I didn’t like rap music,” he says. “Now I know I definitely don’t like it.”
Never too old to learn, indeed.