Tara Murray
An exciting young list attracted new Burnside Heights coach Cole Harvey to the Essendon District Football League division 2 club.
The Bears announced this week that Harvey would coach the side for at least the next two seasons, replacing Aidan Stott, who stood down from the role.
Harvey comes into the role having long been involved at Hillside as a football manager. He this year coached the club’s under-18.5s to the division 1 premiership.
He’s also part of the Calder Cannons coaching staff and the EDFL interleague program.
Harvey said he was keen for the opportunity at the Bears.
“I’ve coached a lot of junior football and under age footy,” he said.
“I want to go and see what it takes to coach at a senior level. My phone has gone into meltdown following the announcement.”
Harvey said he had always wanted to coach senior football and this seemed like the perfect fit.
His mate had moved across to the club last year as a strength and conditioning coach which gave him an idea of the club, while the location was ideal.
“I met with Justin [Pegram] and the committee and it felt pretty good,” he said. “They’ve made a pretty substantial strategic plan of what they want to do and where they want to go.
“It felt like a nice fit. Their main goal is to progress out of division 2.”
One of the biggest things that attracted Harvey to the role was the young talent within the club.
The Bears had nine players under the age of 22 in their side that lost to Coburg Districts in a semi final.
Harvey said while the club wants to move up divisions, they wanted to do it the right way to have sustained success.
“With the age group we’ve got, I can coach to develop them and educate them,” he said.
“Try and get them playing a certain way.
“Most of them are sticking around and hopefully we’ll get some more younger guys to come in and play senior football.
“We’ve got some good young talent and we want to get games into them. When we do go up we want to be on low player points and be able to sustain being in that division.”
Harvey said while they had a young group there were still a number of experienced players in the team.
They will be boosted by the return of former captain Nick Morda, who played just one game this year.
Adam Sullivan, who was returning from a knee injury, was flying at the end of the season, while the likes of Anthony Fawcus, Jordan Hughes and Liam Mercieca would be back.
Harvey said he couldn’t wait to get down to business.
