EDUCATION and culture are what the Murray Bushrangers are looking to build in 2025, as the Coates Talent League Girls program prepares for its first season under new coach Tyson Saunders. The incoming mentor has an abundance of talent at bottom-age level, alongside a couple of key returning over-agers and a mix of top-age prospects who Saunders spoke about at the recent Preseason Testing event.

PRESEASON

“It’s been my first preseason. There’s been a lot of learnings from my point of view, but for us it was a real focus on just getting the enjoyment and the culture right for the girls. Aidan Edwards with the S&C stuff has been really good, so he’s been fantastic and Michelle Fletcher with the wellbeing side of it.

“We’ve been working really hard to create what we think is somewhere for the girls to really enjoy but be challenged with what we’re presenting to them from a fitness side of things, or conditioning side of things. While I’ve learnt a lot of it, the girls have been really good, the girls have responded really well to all the challenges we have given them. We feel that environment that we’re creating is something that they’re enjoying as well.

TOP-AGE VIC COUNTRY/ALLIES HUB MEMBERS

Rain Dodd
Utility | 165cm | 13/01/2007

“Rain’s a ripper. She is quite powerful, explosive player. Really humble, down to earth girl. She’s a real pleasure to have in the squad and just brings an element of humility to everyone around her. Quite powerful, very professional.”

Nikhita Spiteri
Midfielder/Forward | 171cm | 20/07/2007

“Nik lets her footy speaks a lot for her ability. She’s worked so hard over the preseason and you can see it with her athletic attributes. She’s a real pressure player, loves a tackle. I’m expecting that Nikhita will really let her footy do her talking for her this season.”

Molly McLaren
Midfielder/Defender | 163cm | 14/12/2007

“To be honest her preseason has just gotten better and better and better. She was part of our squad at the start of last year which I wasn’t involved in at that point. So from her footy perspective I haven’t seen anything from Moll, but what she provides from a leadership point of view, and her professionalism is really top notch. As I said, building the fact that she took six months off last year out of footy and the way she built back into this preseason has been really good.”

>> PROFILED: 2025 Vic Country summer hub

OTHERS TO WATCH

“There’s Hayley Whitsed whose quite an athletic player and I’m really looking forward to seeing how she goes with her footy this season. Once again a player who has quite a great athletic trait and I think just some education around the way she can go about her footy. Another one is Isabella Klein. I find her athletic traits are quite impressive, she’s got a really good jump on her, she’s quite explosive. Played in the ruck as an underager last year and out of position really for her. The fact that we’re got a couple of talls in there this year, we can hopefully free her up and display what she can. She’s a good sized player that puts onball pressure on and can move around but is quite fast and powerful. Really good long kick.”

OVER-AGERS

“We do have Madi Ibrahim. She’s come back, she’s training with Essendon VFL at the moment. She’s a girl who got a few injuries last year and just didn’t quite get the continuity but has really good athletic ability, really good skills so we’re really keen to have her back when we can.

“Ellie Hall is another, I thought Ellie towards the backend of last year was enormous. I think the way she just hunts the footy and her ability to win the contest and how strong she was, we’re really excited to have her back as well. They’re probably two of the more prominent ones.

“Jaz Holdsworth was another one, she played a bit of wing and really got that down pat and was quite good and started to really work on that overhead marking stuff which was another one of her traits. Tilly Henderson, she’s once again one of those good effort players. Once she’s out there and the game’s on, she’s just a different animal. Loves it, loves contested footy, so they’re the few from the over-agers. Obviously definitely Madi and Elli are right up there. I actually thought they might have gone last year but I think just that sample size might not have been enough.”

BOTTOM-AGERS

“I think we’re really lucky with our bottom-agers. I think that’s where a lot of our natural football talent is. Obviously Sophia Green is one, she’s quite impressive. Rose Bell, Eliza Roche. Talking with [Murray Talent Lead] Mick Wilson, there’s probably seven or eight that we’re really bullish on with their prospects for next year. We’re really excited for what that growth is from our 17s and really to be honest, a lot of those girls played some footy last year, so will be able to have them in the system for another two years which holds them in really good stead and hopefully we can get that culture and the education part of it down pat. Really excited by what they’ll bring next year.”

STYLE OF PLAY

“We feel that we have a really good athletic profile of our players, some really good endurance stuff. But we also think we have a lot of power as well, so for us it’s pretty much eyes up and attack footy. We’d rather see the scoreboard read 19 goals to 20 goals rather than one goal to five goals. We’re really going to encourage the girls to take the game on and really push that footy up the field.”

ROUND 1

vs. Bendigo Pioneers
Saturday April 5, 11:00am
Norm Minns Oval, Wangaratta

 “I feel like we’re really trying to focus on the culture and education for our players. Obviously been a part of a development program, like the scores and results aren’t really what we;’re focusing on. We’re trying to get back to focus on the processes. For us, while we’re really trying to push their development, we just want to keep that education piece going as well and create that environment for them.”