James Flack has joined Williamstown Football Club. 89176_01 Picture: CONTRIBUTED
By LIAM TWOMEY
WILLIAMSTOWN has snared another off-season recruiting coup, signing talented young forward James Flack.
The 19-year-old played with Bendigo in the TAC Cup in 2011 before winning South Mildura’s best and fairest award in 2012.
Seagulls’ football manager Chris Dixon said it was great to have the goal-kicking midfielder on board for the coming season.
“We sat down with James about a couple of weeks ago now and knew he was coming down to Melbourne,” Dixon said.
“He was moving down to actually work in Williamstown so I guess that gave us a bit of a headstart as well.
“He knows one of the players on our list and given the direction we are going, James really thought it was the best place to take his football forward.”
Flack is the third talented youngster in as many weeks to sign with Williamstown after gun Coburg duo Willie Wheeler and Leigh Masters also crossed over.
With Williamstown breaking into a standalone model in 2014, Dixon said the club had made a conscious decision to focus on youth.
“We think we have got a really good young list at the moment and we are not going to go down the path of recruiting a 29-year-old or a 30-year-old because that is not the direction that we want to go as we transition into stand alone,” he said.
“We put a fair bit of time and effort looking into our list management model going forward and we have made the decision that we really want to bring in good quality talented youngsters who have mainly been through the TAC Cup competition.
“With Willie, Lee and now James, that is really the area we want to head in.”
In other list changes, Matthew Cravino, Michael Fogarty and Jack Gray will not return to the Seagulls in 2013.
Cravino has joined Essendon District Football League side Avondale Heights while Gray and Fogarty have returned to their former local clubs.
As the 2013 list begins to take shape, the Seagulls will also be given a major pre-season advantage when they engage in altitude training for the first time.
“We have been pretty lucky in the fact that we have got Matt Inness who is our high performance manager, he has teed us up to use the facilities at the Victoria University,” Dixon said.
“That will allow our players to really take things to the next level and use the facilities there. It is really incredible that a VFL club can access those sorts of things and we are pretty lucky that we have been able to get it through Matt.”
