PENSHURST Football Netball Club (PFNC) has appointed Jayden Watson and Jay Everall as senior football co-coaches for the 2023 Mininera and District Football League (MDFL) season.

After three years at the helm, Cam Penny has stepped down from the role, giving full responsibility to Watson who will be playing coach, and Everall who will view the game from the bench.

Everall said after having played many years in the red and black, as well as leading the club many years ago, it was great to be on board as co-coach for next year.

“I’m really looking forward to it, having coached at the club before some time ago, I always maintained some links there … it’s always been a very welcoming place,” he told The Spectator.

“I caught up with a couple of the guys from the committee, they sort of asked me if there was a role going around on game day on the bench, would I be interested and I was certainly happy to have a further chat about it.

“Jayden was interested in taking on a greater coaching role than he did this year, so co-coaches worked well.”

Everall is well-known at Penshurst having played for the Bombers from about 2005 to 2014, winning two premierships during the stint at the club.

Living in Warrnambool, he has also had stints playing for Russells Creek and Port Fairy, even playing against Watson at one stage.

“I haven’t had a lot to do on an official basis with football over the last few years … I haven’t been in the coaching caper for a few years now, when I left Penshurst, I spent a few years coaching at Russells Creek,” Everall said.

“I played football with (Jayden’s) dad at Penshurst and also played against him for Koroit when I was playing at Port Fairy for a bit there.”

An excitement-factor at the Bombers remains to be the amount of young talent the side has blooded and retained at a senior level, a result of Cam Penny’s guidance and mantra.

“Anyone you talk to who is involved with Penshurst Footy Club will sing the praises of Cam, he’s done an excellent job with a such a young group,” Everall said.

“I would say our job is to continue that improvement, as the younger guys get more game time, we will see that natural progression … we are hoping to add a bit of experience in terms of recruits in the off-season.”

Everall said he had co-coached in the past and the most important aspect was keeping communication at a very high level with lots of benefits to be had for the side.

“I think my role will be to assist particularly on game day while the game is in motion … I’ll certainly be able to provide a little bit of guidance, now that I’ve finished playing, I really enjoy the bench-coaching side of things,” he said.

Watson said he was very excited to team up with Everall and step into a senior coaching role after helping Penny as assistant coach last season.

“Cam let us know his time was done as coach last year and he did a really good job … we had a few talks and came up with the plan of attack which resulted in the co-coaching role which I think will be very beneficial for the club,” he said.

“He was very well organised and one thing I picked up was that he is a really good communicator and reader of people, his public speaking was tremendous, so I learnt a lot from him this season.”

While last season was Watson’s first in a coaching role, he learnt a lot and was looking forward to receiving more advice from Everall in 2023.

“It’ll be really good having a good set of eyes on the bench watching the game the whole time, it leaves me to concentrate on my game a bit more which will be good,” he said.

“We’re looking at having a team mentality and working for each other, also working for improvement within to get the ultimate reward from the side.

Penshurst jumped from ninth position in 2021 to sixth position last year and hopes to continue pushing up towards the top of the ladder with the sole goal of playing finals in 2023 at the forefront.

“We will definitely be looking to play finals this year and get a taste for it, it’ll be good to see the sort of level that we have to play at to get there,” Watson said.

“Retention has been good and obviously talking to other potential recruits and hopefully land a few and builds momentum going into the season.”