Dennis Armfield has been loving his time at Bacchus Marsh.
The former Blue was announced as the Cobras’ coach ahead of the Ballarat Football League season in October.
Armfield said he is excited with the talent he has at his disposal including some fresh recruits and players returning to the club.
“It’s been a real refresher for myself to come and experience something different,” he said.
“It’s really heart warming to be a part of that sort of country town feel, it’s something that I thought I’d enjoy, but I’ve enjoyed it more than I thought I would.
“We’ve been able to recruit a couple and bring a couple of old faces back which is always nice. More importantly is probably retaining the young talent that we have that finished off the year so well last year.
“I think that’s a vital cog to our wheel, we kept those boys because they showed some great light towards the end of the year, finishing off with four wins in a row.”
The recruits have been headlined by former AFL teammate of Armfield’s Andrejs Everitt.
Everitt has joined the club as a playing assistant coach after spending 10 seasons at the top level with the Western Bulldogs, Sydney Swans and Carlton, where he played 131 games and booted 93 goals.
“We’ve been together for a while now and his knowledge, his wisdom, but his ability to develop young talent is just next to none, it’s sensational,” Armfield said.
“I think what he’s been able to do already in his couple of months with our footy club has been superb and it’s what our club’s about at the moment. We are a very young list, a few ageing faces that’s for sure, but our development is going to come from the fast tracking of these guys.
“It allows me to worry about game plan and education and him more of the development side of things which has been very appreciated from my end.”
With Everitt’s help Armfield said he has been delighted at the development he has already seen within the playing group.
“We’ve had six or seven players currently training on VFL [Victorian Football League] lists, some have been welcomed back to us now and some are still there,” he said.
“That’s vital for not only their development but our development and the standards that they’ve brought back to training and the lifting of those standards and the expectations and not only that but internally we’ve had some great young talent from our under-19s.
“They’ve really pushed themselves and pushed the more experienced players to lift their game. That also comes from the recruits and the returning players, you hear them making mention of how exciting, how energetic and enthusiastic our list is and it’s a pleasing thing to have.”
While Armfield said he is realistic of where his team sits, his goals stretch much further beyond 2024’s win-loss ratio.
“I came in with a clear goal that I wanted to seek improvement and wanted to lift our standards and increase our professionalism but ultimately build stronger connections within our organisation both on and off the field.,” he said.
“The old analogy of you’d go to war with your mates… That’ll lead to the improvement both from a week to week and hopefully yearly basis. I don’t want to set any barriers because I’m still learning the competition and I do my due diligence and there are some really good sides in our competition.
“For me it’s just about building connections, getting on the same page and a club first mentality throughout our individual players.”
The Cobras will begin their season against Ballarat on April 13.
