From the Bayside Leader
Courtesy Leader Group Newspapers

Reported by Simon McEvoy

THE man behind Sandringham's triple premiership golden era, coach Mark Williams, is moving on.

Last Friday Williams took a full-time job as development coach at Melbourne Football Club. It's an exciting opportunity for the 43-year-old, who has ambitions to be an AFL senior coach.

"My ambitions are to hopefully become a senior coach if I can, so this was a step forward in that regard," he said.  "I went for the senior job last year at Melbourne and they basically said to me if I want to move forward I've got to do some assistant coaching and go from there."

Williams' association with Sandringham was filled with success and he will always be known as a club legend.  A former Carlton and Footscray utility, Williams played in the Zebras' 1992 flag. A decade later, in October, 2003, he was appointed coach of the club, and he made a breathtaking entrance, guiding the Zebras to the 2004 premiership, followed by the '05 and '06 flags.

This year, Sandringham finished on top of the ladder but bowed out of the finals in the semis.

After weeks of negotiations with AFL Canberra, the Sydney Swans have signed a new three-year deal for the Swans Reserves to remain in the competition.

It was appropriate after the initial five-year agreement to review the terms of being in the AFL Canberra competition, especially given the Swans dominance over the past three years.

The Swans accepted their dominance wasn’t healthy for the overall competition and worked with AFL Canberra to rectify those issues.

The priority for the Swans was to firstly stay in the NSW/ACT competition, as they felt this was important to the development of the code in their home state.

Secondly they believed the way to achieve equalisation of the competition was to improve the standard of the competition in Canberra instead of looking at a simple solution of restricting the three-time consecutive premiers.

Courtesy of Leader Newspapers
Reported by Paul Amy

CASEY Scorpions captain Nigel Carmody will wear the black and white colours of the Collingwood jumper next season.

Carmody, a 142-game stalwart of the Scorpions, confirmed on Monday that he had joined the Magpies' VFL team.

Collingwood will be running its own state league team after cutting ties with its partner of seven years, Williamstown.

Carmody's decision followed meetings with Collingwood coach Gavin Brown, recruiting official Noel Judkins and football manager Geoff Walsh. 

He admitted the departure of coach Peter Banfield had prompted him to "look around".

"It was the impetus for me to see what was out there, which is something I've never done before," he said. "It's pretty well known I was disappointed with the coaching situation. I thought Peter did a good job and deserved to stay on."

From The Age

Repored by
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Former Collingwood AFL captain and assistant coach Gavin Brown has been appointed as the inaugural coach of the Magpies' stand-alone VFL side.

Collingwood cut its ties with VFL affiliate Williamstown at the end of the 2007 season, believing their player development would be better served by running their own reserves team.

"It's a great opportunity for me, personally, but it's also fantastic for the club to be able to fast-track our players and develop them the way we want to do it," Brown told collingwoodfc.com.au.

"I think it's going to be a fairly significant change for the club, there's no doubt about that. We had a terrific alignment with Williamstown, and it was possibly the best in the competition.

"But still, at the end of the day, there were issues as Williamstown is obviously there to win footy, and we want to win games of footy too, but at the same time, sometimes you feel it's more important to actually develop the player."