By Liam Twomey
It is six months since Deer Park last played in the Western Region Football League, but the same question remains.
Can anyone stop the Lions?
After winning the 2013 flag, Deer Park emphatically defended its premiership title in 2014, going through the season undefeated.
The exclamation point at the end of the dominating run came in the form of a 77-point thrashing of Spotswood on grand final day.
But it will be a new-look Deer Park outfit that takes to the field this season.
The Lions have farewelled eight premiership players, including Heath Ayres, Shylo Smith, Jackson Barling and Brent Guerra.
Two of the spots will be taken up by returning Lions pair Shannon Broadbent and Ryan Crawford, who played in the club’s 2013 premiership team before lining up in the Goulburn Valley Football League last year.
They will be joined by former Essendon District Football League best and fairest winner Rodney Van Riet.
The other spots will be filled by some of the Lions’ youngsters who have impressed senior coach Marc Bullen through the pre-season.
“In my opinion I’ve got about five or six young guys I believe can play good senior football,” Bullen said. “The ball is in their court as to whether they can do that. Their training standards and form have been pretty good.”
Last year was the first time a WRFL
division 1 club was able to go through an entire season undefeated.
The Lions will again be chasing history this year as they look to become the first side since Spotswood in 2007-09 to win three flags in a row.
“There is no expectation to go through the season undefeated or anything like that,” Bullen said. “We want to make finals first and foremost, develop some kids and then hopefully we can do everything right with our training form and our training standards.
“In modern-day football, getting three in a row is very hard and there’s a lot of hard work to do.”
Deer Park will open its 2015 campaign against Spotswood in a rematch of the past two division 1 grand finals.
The Woodsmen have experienced some player turnover of their own through the off-season with Jason Cloke and Charlie Nastasi among the big names to be playing elsewhere.
Bullen isn’t buying into talk that Spotswood could be set for a slide down the ladder this season and is expecting another extremely tough hit-out. “We haven’t lost to Spotswood since 2013 in the first semi-final. We want to keep it moving in that direction and get our season off to a terrific start.”
