With preseason now done and dusted, the Senior Men’s sides are excited to get the ball rolling with their first community rugby match of the season this weekend.
Melbourne Rugby Club Dewar Shield Head Coach, Greg Coward gets us up close and personal with his thoughts for the rugby Season ahead.
What a start it has been for the Club with all teams and players doing the bulk of their training at Gardiner Park and moving back home to Orrong Park about four weeks ago.
With the privilege of being given the Head Coach role for Season 2023 and the introduction of new coaches in Liam Neveling, Rodney Morland and new arrival Conrad Foord who are joining returning Backs Coach Malaki ‘Laki’ Enosa, it has given us a great way to deliver, teach and Coach a different playing style for 2023.
The first preseason training session started way back in October last year and with nine weeks leading up to the Christmas / New Year break it was good to see an average of 15 to 20 players to each of the sessions and showing and developing a good base to work from.
After the break we moved into preseason training in mid-January. The number of players starting to return from last season and the start of players coming from overseas (Scotland, France, England and New Zealand) to boost our overall numbers for the new winter Season was very encouraging to say the least.
The players trained and developed their existing and new skills in readiness for our inaugural Intra-Club trial game at Northern Panthers in February where two teams played against their mates and training partners within our Club. A good hit out and the first chance to see what sort of players we had as Coaches.
This was then followed by another three-week block of training and the first selection of a 2023 squad to make the Men’s preseason tour to Brisbane to play against Sunnybank RUFC (Premier Grade team / Club).
The tour match was very encouraging where our team that played the first stanza ended up winning and the team that played the second stanza fell just short by five points. If there was a bit more time on the clock we may have got over the top with our fitness (thanks to Jordan and Blake for the S&C program). In the end we were not far from making it a clean sweep in the trial games in Brisbane.
After returning from the preseason tour, we have had the Rugby Vic 10s tournament, where we had ten players compete and reach the Plate Final. Then we had two more trail games against Northern and Eltham (3-way trial games) and Melton – all of which we won. Those matches were good to trial players with different combinations for the Season ahead.
That puts us to where we are this week – heading into the first round of community Rugby and a Dewar Shield match against last year’s Runners-up Power House.
The team has been training well and final selection of players has been difficult. As a Club we are in a good position where we have good depth in the Men’s teams right down to our 3rd Grade, the Chargers and Colts. This has been helped by having our training sessions as one squad and the intensity around players wanting to start and play in the Dewar Shield side has been pleasing for all the Coaches.
Not wanting to make predictions, as I will leave that to everyone that reads this, but I believe along with all the Coaches, that we are in a good position for the start of the Season. We will build every week and aim to have all our Senior sides appearing in some shape and good form at the end of the Season and the Rugby Vic finals series.
Looking forward to the start of the season this Saturday and hoping we get a good home crowd for all games. GO UNICORNS!
Article written by Greg Coward, Head Coach
Senior Men’s 1st XV, 2nd XV and 3rd XV matches this weekend are home at Orrong Romanis Reserve, Prahran:
Mawhinney Cup 12:00 pm 3rd XV – Melbourne v Power House
Penwill Cup 1:30 pm 2nd XV – Melbourne v Power House
Dewar Shield 3:15 pm 1st XV – Melbourne v Power House
Bolton Cup 12:00 PM Endeavour Hills v Melbourne Colts (Away)
Championship 3:15 PM Eltham v Melbourne Chargers (Away)
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