By ADEM SARICAOGLU
NEW Altona coach Greg Drake wants his Seagulls to enjoy their Premier League hockey campaign this year.
Since coming on board over the summer, Drake has gone about increasing the depth of his squad ahead of this weekend’s season opener against local rival, Footscray.
There are no major cuts to speak of from last year’s team but Altona will welcome the returns of Mairaed Crawford and Taia Leenstra, among others, who will all form part of Drake’s new structure for the upcoming season.
“(It’s a) completely new structure in terms of on-field and we’re undertaking a really strong structural approach but we’ve also put an emphasis on skill development,” Drake said.
“We’ve done some analysis and recognised that there are some deficiencies in players’ skills and we’ve specifically targeted them through the pre-season.
“We’ve done skill-specific-based sessions in order to fast-track the development of the group, and the other thing we’ve done is we’ve expanded the size of our squad.”
Drake said he had included a number of young up-and-coming players to try and fast-track their development as well.
The Seagulls finished 11th with just three wins last year, and while Drake is keen to see that number grow in the wins column this time around, he said the key for his young group will be to make sure they have some fun in 2014.
“First and foremost we want the players to enjoy their year,” he said.
“That is absolutely most important and we think if we can make it enjoyable, then that means the development will occur more easily.
“We’d certainly like to make sure we have more wins than last year and we think we’re well-placed for that and our squad is certainly stronger.
“Our first two teams will definitely be much stronger than last year – how much that relates to how well the rest of the competition has improved is an unknown. But I’m confident that we’ll win more games than we did last year.”
