Tara Murray
One of the Melton Thoroughbreds inaugural men’s Big V players will be in the coaching hot seat this season.
The Thoroughbreds announced that John De Jonge has been appointed to the role for next year’s Big V division 2 season.
De Jonge said it was an exciting opportunity.
“I’m excited and I’m ready for the challenge,” he said. “As a coach you have to want to do it and I saw the advertisement and I thought it was an opportune time to take it on.
“I’d been at Sunbury youth league for a few years and had a successful period and I was getting towards the end of my time there.
“It was a wonderful opportunity to step into a senior role.”
De Jonge was part of the Melton Big V program from 1993 to 2010 and thoroughly enjoyed his time at the club.
He said he would still play if he could.
“I never really thought about coaching when I started,” he said. “I was passionate about the game and I wanted to stay connected and moved into coaching.”
De Jonge takes over the role from Mick McCallum, who coached them the past two seasons.
They finished in sixth spot this season, missing out on finals on head-to-head ratio.
“They had a good run early and for one reason or another, they weren’t able to get that extra win or two to get into finals,” De Jonge said.
“That’s what every coach wants to do [play finals], especially with the senior representative program. That is our goal.
“We’ll go through assembling a side and game style that will get us where we want. It’ll be my first season against this competition and I have to learn who other teams are and scout them.”
The Thoroughbreds will have tryouts on October 29.
De Jonge said they were definitely looking to retain some of the group from this season and hopefully get a few more locals back to the side.
“We want to build on the playing group,” he said. “We want to get the under-20s working with youth league and work with youth league to be a feeder program into the seniors year on year and give us sustained success the club is desperately looking for.
“Hopefully we can get some players to return as well.”
Ben Whyte has been re-appointed the club’s youth league men’s coach.
