Tara Murray
One of the Essendon District Football League’s best players is heading home to play at Keilor Park.
The Devils, which have slowly been rebuilding the last couple of years, have announced the massive signing of Robbie Castello for the 2022 division 2 season.
Castello started his playing career at the Devils before heading to NAB League and the VFL.
In more recent times, Castello has been back playing in the EDFL.
He was captain-coach at Maribyrnong Park for four seasons, before joining Westmeadows in 2019.
Devils coach Paul Guicas said the signing of Castello was massive for the club and one of the biggest in the club’s recent history.
“We’re pretty happy,” he said.
“We’ve been speaking to Robbie for a few years and just checking in. He had previously mentioned about possibly wanting to finish at Keilor Park.
“It’s now the right time. He’s a great person and will be terrific for the club.”
Guicas said the addition of Castello would help provide some more leadership on and off the field. He said they expected Castello to play plenty of midfield minutes, while also having an impact up forward.
He said leadership on field was one thing they lacked at times this year. The Devils finished sixth this year with four wins from 10 matches.
“We were a very young side. We won against Coburg Districts and Hadfield and we beat Burnside Heights and were thinking how good is this?
“Then we lost to Coburg Districts by 90 points.
“We hadn’t played a lot of games together. Robbie will be able to help guys settle down when things aren’t going our way.
“He will help the midfield and you can’t put weight on how important he is.”
Castello, who won the league’s division 1 best and fairest award in 2019, is currently recovering from an achilles injury.
Guicas said Castello had been really professional in his recovery and was starting to jog on it now and was feeling great.
Guicas said they were yet to have proper conversations about whether Castello would have an official coaching role, but Guicas expected him to provide plenty of leadership either way.
“He wasn’t sure if he was going to play and it’s about wanting to get himself right first,” he said.
“Hopefully Robbie will help out in some capacity, but we will talk about it later on.
“I’ll be speaking to him all the time and getting his opinion on things. He will help run the midfield.”
Castello is the first big new signing for the Devils for next year. Guicas said his phone had been running hot since announcement.
“Hopefully it will be a domino effect and we might have other players who have played with Keilor Park but playing elsewhere looking to come back,” he said.
“We’ve had a couple of tough years, but we’re getting to the next stage. We’ll hopefully make some more announcements in the next couple of weeks.
“We wanted to get respect this year and I think we did that. Now it’s about putting it together and being consistent every week.”
