Coburg making history in its 130th year

The Coburg Lions will be making history in the clubs 130^th year, with the club fielding its first ever senior women’s team.

The team are set to play in the South Eastern Women’s competition with the aim of playing in the VFLW in the next few years.

The Inner Sanctum spoke to Coburg’s inaugural senior womens captain Maddie Edwards about preseason and Coburg’s first womens team.

Preseason for the Coburg Women’s team kicked off in December where the side really hit the ground running.

“Considering we’re a brand-new club and none of us have really played together it has been a really successful preseason,” Edwards told The Inner Sanctum.

“Especially from a fitness end, you can tell when we played in our practice match that we were fit and were more match fit then we probably would have thought. “

This senior women’s side means a lot to the Lions, with a lot of work going on behind the scenes to get the team up and running.

“It means a lot from all aspects of the club. The directors at the club, the men’s side, even just Seb (Sebastian Spagnulo, General Manager at Coburg) himself,” Edwards said.

“They’ve provided so much support for us it’s just really saying that they care and we’re really important to them.

“You can just see on social media and stuff like how awesome it is to finally have a girls side up and running. You can just tell by all the work they’ve put in so far.”

Edwards was named the inaugural captain of the Coburg senior women’s side, which was voted on by the coaching staff and her teammates.

“I probably wasn’t expecting it. Just the fact that I’ve been given the opportunity to lead the girls this year is one that I’m so excited for,” she said.

Edwards was one of the first women’s signings to be announced by Coburg. Since then, she has received plenty of opportunity to play in the VFLW which she has turned down to focus on this Coburg side.

“You know I said this to Liam (Liam Cavanagh, Head Coach) when I had the interview with him, I came into this year wanting to have one focus,” she said.

“I’ve had years and years of just playing in two sides. I really just wanted to have that focus in one club and investment in one club.

“When Liam interviewed me, I knew it was going to be something good and something special. I could just tell that this side would mean a lot to me in the long run.”

Coburg is set to kick off its season on April 24 against the St Kilda Sharks but have had a number of practice matches, the first against the 2019 runners up in West Brunswick.

“There were a lot of plays that we practiced over the preseason that we wanted to try and implement in the game,” Edwards said.

“It was a slow start but after half time something just clicked. Maybe it was the fact that that none of us had played together before and we needed to get used to each other.

“We said at the start of the game that something we really wanted to implement and show during our first game was our fierceness.

 “I feel like we really came out in that second half and really emphasised on that, really used it and looked a lot fiercer in the second half.

“I had this conversation with Liam after the game, it was almost a  bit of a shock showing how well we did being a brand new side up against such a strong team.

“You know it really shows a positive future for us this year, hopefully we can do well in the upcoming games.”

About Author