Couldn't attend the AGM last night but lucky for me I know someone who was able to get all the info for me.
Matt Bateman who was the Director of Football has stood down saying his passion is more in dealing with the district so he will move into a district coordinator role or something like that. Its basically liaising with the clubs in our district and making sure the relationships between them and the club are strong.
Replacing him will be Troy Cook. Yes that's right we have a Director of Football with over 300 games of AFL and WAFL experience.
Steve Kargotich also stepped down as has moved to Melbourne. Hope I heard that right as the phone was breaking up when that was being mentioned.
Coming on to the board is CEO of Water Polo WA, ex Claremont Premiership Player and former coach at the Tigers, Dale Ballantyne is also a new addition to the board.
Kristy or Kirsty Ayre, excuse the spelling has also been welcomed onto the board. Has worked in the oil and gas sector as well as event management.
Daryl Mann was announced as President for the next two years.
All in all three new people on the board, two of them with football experience.
Long time club servant Neil Allan was announced as a life member. Congratulations Neil.
The fixtures were apparently finalised late last week with the Demons playing Swan Districts away, Subiaco away before a home game against Claremont in round three.
Out of the top 5 teams from 2016 we only play Subiaco three times.
The outgoing Football Director admitted that they needed to get better in attack. Had some stats that he used to make reference to improvement from 2015 to this year.
Total points against was apparently the lowest the club has conceded since 1997. They were very pleased about this and said a lot of the credit went to defensive coach Chance Bateman.
When they did a review when Earl was appointed, out of the 33 players that played league football in 2014, only 11 of them played in 2016.
At the end of this season they also asked an opposition coach to analyse their list and put players into A grader, B grader etc...
Perth had three A graders compared to Subiaco who had 10 and South Fremantle who had six.
Perth had three B graders while Subiaco amd South Fremantle both had 5.
The club admitted that the needed to try and improve this by hopefully getting some more top end talent in, building depth and by developing the kids they already have at the club.
Chance Bateman will continue as backline coach while Michael Pratt will move into the midfield and Garry Moss in charge of the forwards.
The club has made a loss of $55,000 roughly. Gate takings were down overall. The club said the appointment and creation of new rules within the club such as Trevor Williams role he started this year, Callum Walley's role as an Indigenous Liason Officer and the redistributing of the roles within the office which has seen former player Daniel Arangio employed in a Marketing role were the main reasons behind the loss.
The club believes these roles to be important if they are to move with the times. I dont know if anyone has noticed but the club has been a bot more active with different forms of social media other than Facebook recently.
They believe Cal Walley's role to be important with roughly 70 players of indigenous decent playing for the club from the 13's development squad right up to the league team.
Hope I've got everything correct as I was frantically writing down what I was being told.
Cheers