Avenel and Murchison-Toolamba have recently finalised their netball heads, albeit taking vastly different approaches in their personnel.
The Swans have elected to maintain stability at the top of their netball department, once again locking in Ashley Hansen and Niki Lord as co-coaches for next season.
Under Hansen and Lord, Avenel took four straight games down the stretch in 2023 to occupy a finals place heading into the final round.
They would leave their home court with hearts broken after defeat to Nagambie, though, when Violet Town’s victory elsewhere consigned the Swans to an early exit.
By that token, the motivation is clear and obvious.
“I think we’re going to have a stronger team this year,” Hansen said.
“We’re super excited to take the team towards finals success that we haven’t experienced in a while.
“We’ve been proactively recruiting behind the scenes and we’ve started trials much earlier than we normally would to try and attract new talent.
“I feel like Nik is a smart netballer and really thinks about the philosophies behind the game, whereas I’m very ‘what you see is what you get’, so both of our methods work well because we cover all aspects.”
Not that the transition to a dual coaching model was necessarily the smoothest in the early going, though.
After navigating the early growing pains, 2024 is surely trending as an up year for Avenel.
“Last season it took us half a year to get it down pat, to be honest,” Hansen said.
“But we want to give it a red-hot go this year.
“We have had a lot of high-calibre players turn up and this season we’ve already got enough to convincingly fill three teams.”
Elsewhere, Murchison-Toolamba elected to take a different path in readying its netball staff.
The Hoppers unveiled Alice Cunningham, who led the club’s A-grade from 2016-19, as its new head netball coach.
This appointment marks a welcome return for the former A-grade boss and Cunningham will expect to lift the senior squad out of the doldrums it was confined to in 2023.
There remains a significant amount of work to do for a competitive Hoppers side to improve on its dismal showing last season, where the A-grade side avoided the bottom on percentage with a 1-14 record.
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