The Western Bulldogs and Williamstown will see their new VFL alignment kick off this weekend when Williamstown take on Werribee in Round 1.

 

The three-year alignment included the appointment of a full time coach, Brad Gotch who is also Development Manager for the Western Bulldogs.

 

With a strong pre-season and the Williamstown seniors winning four out of their five practice matches, Gotch believes the partnership is already showing signs of success.

 

“The main thing I am doing is to try and build a successful culture. Last week I think we had nine Bulldogs playing in the practice match against Casey Scorpions which we won by 69-points and they had 12-13 St Kilda players. It was a good performance and that was encouraging. In the other games we’ve had 4 Bulldogs players, then 7 in the next, so it’s been a little unsettled due to some playing in the NAB Cup and others being injured,” he said.

 

One of the focuses of the partnership was to have a full-time coach and development manager and the young players are already noticing a difference, he said.

 

“The form’s been pretty good and the Bulldogs boys are happy that I’m coaching because I get to see them all during the week.”

 

While the Williamstown sides work on development they are still very much eyeing a strong finish in the VFL.

 

“You always set your sights on trying to finish top eight. Of course that’s determined a little bit about how everyone mixes, what the injury run is like, so I don’t like to go making big bold predictions. At this stage our sole focus is to win as many games as you can and try and make the finals and then we can review how it goes from there,” Gotch said.

 

“As a group we have picked up a couple of good VFL players for this season who I think will make an impact. Ben Jolley, Matthew Little (unfortunately he dislocated an elbow three weeks ago he is still a three weeks away) and Dean Galea from West Adelaide will play forward. We’ve got Jarrad Grant (Bulldogs) so that covers the loss of Andrew Williams who kicked 58 goals last year.

 

We think we’ve got a pretty good squad. Johnson is captain and Steven Greene is his deputy. Greene didn’t play last year after Round 6 because of a knee injury so he’s like getting a new recruit. He played his first game in the reserves last week so depending on how he has pulled up we might look at playing him this week or the following one,” he said.

 

“We have a strong squad this year and the majority of them played in last year’s preliminary final. To have that initial strength within the group and then be able to top up the recruits we’ve got plus the Bulldogs players is very exciting. It’s probably a better squad looking on paper than what we were in the preliminary final last year. That doesn’t mean anything until we perform but we do look stronger on paper in 2008.

 

It certainly looks promising. We’ve finished in the top four the last two years and if I say the squad looks better then unless the other teams improve dramatically then you would like to think we are a good chance for a good year.”