By ADEM SARICAOGLU
MARC Richardson will be stepping down as coach of the Altona Hockey Club’s senior women’s team to spend more time with his young family.
In the middle of what turned out to be a very tough year for Altona, Richardson decided he would be moving on at season’s end.
“I knew that my youngest son, who was born late last year, was getting a bit older and a bit more demanding so, given we weren’t performing that well, maybe it was time for a change,” Richardson said.
“I wanted to spend a bit more time with the family and hopefully give the girls a bit of a refresher with someone else.”
Richardson had spent three challenging years with the Seagulls in the Premier League, but told Star last week his time there was “really enjoyable”.
“We got promoted and 2011 was our first year in the Premier League (and) one of the hardest things to do is to stay up once you get promoted, and we managed to do that pretty well,” Richardson said.
“But we’ve had three really tough years in the Premier League where we’ve been thereabouts for a little while but not quite good enough, and it was a bit tougher again losing a few players.
“But the challenge of blooding some young players has been great.”
The relatively youthful Seagulls battled for a lot of their 2013 Premier League campaign, managing only three wins from 22 games to end up 11th on the table.
Looking back on the season that was, Richardson summed up Altona’s year as one played in three patches.
“We were pretty competitive early on for the mid-part of the season and had a few unlucky games late – some last-minute losses that brought down the confidence a little bit,” Richardson said.
“We had a pretty poor patch just after the middle part of the season, we had a few players away injured and got thumped a couple of times by some of the finalists, and then for probably the last month or so it was actually pretty good.”
Co-captain Stephanie Sarantis led Altona’s scoring with 10 goals for the year while former Hockeyroo Danielle Schubach was also very impressive with five of her own.
