Bill Puckett, the Roar’s coach for the past three seasons, will again step up to steer the ship when football finally resumes for the border club.
Roar president Manny Artavilla was confident the Englishman was the right man for the job to pick up from where he left off in 2019.
“Bill has grown into the job since taking the helm three years ago,” he said.
“After missing out in 2019 by one game, there were really high hopes this year that we could improve even more.
“So, to not get a season in this year, it was a pretty easy choice to have him on board again.”
Puckett said while the COVID-19-induced footballing drought hadn’t been a total loss, he conceded the boys in yellow and black were champing at the bit to take to the park again.
“The year off may have been a blessing in disguise for some of the older guys, myself included, from putting our bodies through the games each week,” he said.
“But we are all on the same page in that we are set to get back out on the field again.”
The Englishman’s appointment comes a month on from Cobram Soccer Pavilion’s official opening at Apex Reserve.
While it has been ready since the start of the year, due to a lack of competition no team has yet been able to make use of the facility – meaning Puckett cannot wait to see the venue in use.
“The club has been waiting 60 years for their own home and we have finally been given it and we haven’t been able to use it,” he said.
“Seeing the progress to get to this stage, it has been an immense amount of hard work behind the scenes.
“We are just looking to playing that first game in front of our building and home crowd and hopefully we can (have) a big turnout for next year with good support from the community.”
● In other news, the Summer 7’s competition run by the Albury Wodonga Football Association will not go ahead this year.
The competition’s cancellation was made public on Facebook through a statement posted on September 25.
“The AWFA executive committee would like to thank the community for their interest in this proposed program however due to a lack of resources to make this possible it will not be running in 2020,” the statement read.
“We appreciate everyone’s interest and will endeavour to revisit this in 2021.”
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