Newsletter for the Rotary Club of Greater Geraldton - Issue No.: 780 Issue Date: 15 Apr, 2024

Guest Speaker Craig Walker introduced by Phil Martin (his invocation and toast was so good, we brought him back for more...)

Craig Walker has just completed his fifth year as Senior Coach of the WA Country Football team. He was previously the coach of the WA Country Colts who he first coached in 2010. It is a job he does for no pay. The big reward is coaching the black and gold.

In coaching everyone has opinions, but he thinks that it just like a business, it has to have structures or it will fail.

He says coaching techniques have changed enormously since he played football and that the most important thing now is to understand the player and then develop a team. The game has taken on many different elements of other sports such as basketball and soccer in the way that patterns of play are created and developed.

Focusing on country football he says he has to drive everywhere to see players. He wants people with values that include honesty, integrity and professionalism. He works with a small team of selectors, who like Craig, spend a lot of time driving to different games. One of the best players to have come out of his coaching program is Eagles player and Mid West recruit Liam Ryan.

At the moment they are already identifying talent for next year's squad which will be composed of an initial group of sixty players that Craig needs to reduce to twenty two. The players are generally aged between nineteen and thirty three.

Craig drew a football oval on our whiteboard and put us through a goal kicking exercise. Hugh dropped the ball at full forward...

Questions:

Jim Dillon drugs in football.

Steve Muir on eligibility to play for Country WA

Hugh on the downfall of the Dockers

GS Thanks by Laurie Dines