Sport
14 September, 2023
Star Saints shine on best and fairest night
The Saints came marching in to the Maryborough Castlemaine District Football Netball League best and fairest on Monday night, taking away both the Berry Powell Medal through Joel Cowan and the Nalder Tracey Medal through Jessica Walker. Cowan’s...
The Saints came marching in to the Maryborough Castlemaine District Football Netball League best and fairest on Monday night, taking away both the Berry Powell Medal through Joel Cowan and the Nalder Tracey Medal through Jessica Walker.
Cowan’s win in the senior football count was especially thrilling, with the Trentham midfield talisman securing the win with the last card of the night, polling three votes to finish on 27, overhauling long-time leader, and reigning winner, Har-court’s Brayden Frost, who polled 24 votes.
Lexton’s Josh Sargent and Maldon’s Seb Greene finished equal third on 21 votes.
The Nalder Tracey Medal was much more straightforward, with a dominant season by Trentham goalkeeper Walker seeing her poll maximum votes in the last four games to finish on 32 votes, eight votes clear of Natte Bealiba goalshooter Emma Ryan (24), with Swans teammate Ella Tranter (23) one vote behind.
For Cowan, the win was his second Berry Powell Medal, having previously won the award in 2019.
After moving from Daylesford in 2018, Cowan immediately announced himself as a presence with his elite ability to extract the ball from the contest.
In 67 games with the Saints, Cowan has been named in the best on 50 occasions — seemingly never playing a bad game.
However, with Trentham eliminated by Harcourt in last weekend’s preliminary final, Cowan says it would be great to achieve team success, with the Saints still searching for their first premiership since 1994.
“It’s always humbling. It’s great to win one, but I would much rather team success than personal accolades,” he said.
Thankfully, with a young group surrounded by star power, with the likes of Joel Dovaston and Harrison Knight also playing good footy this season, the future is still bright enough for Trentham, while plans are afoot for the Saints to return to the under 17s competition, where Cowan looks set to play a part in developing the young players.
“It’s great playing with the guys — we all get along. We’re all still pretty young, I think I’m the oldest of the group, being 26,” he said.
“When everything comes together, it’s great, and we just want to get it clicking all the time.
“To get the 17s back up and running after a couple of years of not having them is a massive thing, it’s a credit to the people behind the scenes to get them together and win over players, and I think it would be very good for us.”
Cowan was also complimentary of first-year coach Clive Raak, who arrived from Hepburn, with the experienced premiership coach driving the Saints to match their preliminary final appearance from 2022.
“All credit to Clive, he has come in to a new club not knowing much about us, but he has coached us very well, and after all the players that we had lost last year, we didn’t know if we’d be competitive again, but Clive kept us that way, and his team of coaches that have come on board, our line coaches, have done a brilliant job this year,” he said.
For Walker, this season was her first playing netball since 2019, and immediately took control of the Trentham defensive unit, which she says is her new family.
“The last season I played was in 2019. I’m very competitive. The way the club has welcomed my partner and I has been the reason why I have stayed,” she said.
“We have no family in Trentham, so they have become my family in effect, they’re lovely, they step up and help look after our daughter, and they’re the reason why I’m here and I was able to play so well. I didn’t have to worry about anyone looking after her, they had it all under control.”
Walker said while the Saints improved from a seventh-placed finish in 2022 to a fifth-place finish in 2023, resulting in her Nalder Tracey victory, there was still work to do.
“It’s exciting to win something like this. You don’t join a team sport to win individual accolades, so it’s nice to be rewarded,” she said.
“But you go in to be the last team at the end of the season, and we didn’t do that this year, so that is a goal next year.
“I think we were a bit inconsistent as a team, there were times where we could have done a bit better than we did. We only lost five games for the season, which is great, but we lost by too many goals against the bigger teams, which isn’t good enough.”
However, the team’s versatility has improved, according to Walker.
“We have had a lot of players come in and out and had a lot of versatility, and about midway through the season, we found out what worked for us, and we were able to capitalise on everyone’s strengths, which showed by winning our last few games,” she said.
“It’s been great working with the likes of Jade Cass and Ebony Clark, they are both quite young, so having myself screaming and pushing them to different positions have been working well.
“They’ve been developing themselves as players, and we’ve become a strong unit towards the end of the season. We have the consistency of playing each week.”
Walker says improving the juniors will be a key focus for her and the club next season.
“We have lots of juniors that put their hand up to help, but they also get to sit on the bench to experience the senior netball, and it’s all about the family and keeping everyone there, breeding from the juniors all the way up to seniors,” she said.
“Ideally, we would love to have all our teams in finals, especially juniors, so next year, it will be a focus to strengthen our junior teams to start getting them through to our senior teams.”
The league also honoured the best of the best in the league’s other divisions, as well as off the field.
The club champion award went to Carisbrook, rewarded for an outstanding season across the board, with six teams participating on grand final day.
Long serving members, Maryborough Rovers’ Graeme Johnson and Campbells Creek’s Wayne Walsh, were awarded life membership of the league, while Creek’s Marg Stevens took out the Max Martin Administrator of the Year award.
Rookies of the year went to Natte Bealiba’s Lavinia Martin in A grade netball and Royal Park’s Lachlan Bates in senior football respectively, while the leading goalkicker awards were presented to Carisbrook’s Anthony Zelencich and Trentham’s Luke Whitehouse respectively.
In the reserves vote count, Maldon’s Shaun Burchell secured the win with a round to spare, while in the B and C grade counts, both grades were decided in the final round, with Avoca’s Kodie Green-wood winning the B grade best and fairest, and Zali Mortlock from Natte Bealiba winning the C grade best and fairest.
The Maryborough District Advertiser awards went to Carisbrook’s Laura Hurse in A grade netball and Zak Rinaldi in football.
