New Casey-South Melbourne head coach John Hayes, left, and president Graham Yallop will be looking for an improved season in the club’s second year at Casey Fields. Picture: Stewart Chambers.By Marc McGowan
CASEY-SOUTH Melbourne Cricket Club has chosen former assistant coach John Hayes as the man to lead it to glory from next season on.
Hayes was an assistant to exuberant Englishman Roger Sillence last season but he will now take hold of the head coaching reins after Sillence took his bat and ball to New South Wales.
“Obviously I fit the type of coach that the club wants at the moment,” Hayes, who lives in Berwick, said.
“If I believe I’ve taken them as far as I can, I’ll be the first to put my hand up to say so.
“I really feel that the club is heading in the right direction and I’m very proud to be a part of it. I’m looking forward to getting stuck into it and helping players improve.”
Hayes will continue to play in Casey-South Melbourne’s second XI side next season after having played at that standard with Prahran and at subdistrict level with Coburg and Brighton.
He has also padded up for West Gippsland Cricket Association clubs Pakenham Upper, Cardinia and Officer.
New captain Michael Hansen will conduct the match-day mentoring duties for the first XI, with various other roles shared between senior players Craig Entwistle, Matthew Hawking and Robbie Elston.
Team manager James Ralph and scorer Billy Lincoln have also been given added responsibilities.
One of Hayes’ toughest challenges will be establishing ties with local clubs, which will no doubt be helped by his profile in the region.
“We’re not here to pillage players from their clubs,” he said.
“We have a lot of work to do with them and that started last year when we had Pakenham come out for a session.”
Sillence’s exit was a long-time coming after he endured a rocky relationship with the club during the 2006-07 season.
The all-rounder was a classy performer on-field, however, and as yet, the Swans have not replaced him with another marquee player.
“Roger made a lot of runs and took a lot of wickets for Casey-South Melbourne – we can’t deny that, and you get your benefits (with an overseas player) for sure,” Hayes said.
“But they don’t do a pre-season and they come in pretty much the week before after the rest of the players have spent months together.
“Sometimes that can be disruptive.
“There are positives, but also negatives, and you have to look long-term, and our long-term aim is to produce quality players from our own club who hopefully go on to represent their state and country.”
Fast bowler Troy Ryan, who was sidelined with an achilles injury in the second half of the year, is the other notable omission from last season’s team.
The player exciting the club most is developing quick Lukas Hoogenboom.
“We think ‘Hoogs’ can be anything,” Hayes said.
“He knows he has a lot of work to do, but on raw ability and watching the way his pace picked up as the year went on, we think he can improve again and become a strike bowler.
“If we can get another 10 per cent out of him we think he could quite easily be in the state selectors’ calculations potentially in two years’ time.”
The Swans host their Academy Development Squad at Sportsworx Sports Cricket Centre in Narre Warren on Sunday before official pre-season training begins on 19 July.
Hayes is also hoping to hold an intensive training camp at Casey Fields on 15 and 16 September, pending council approval, where players would remain at the facility for the duration with strict restrictions placed on them.
It will all be in preparation for what the new mentor hopes is a successful second year in Cranbourne.
“Certainly from a first XI point of view, we’ll be aiming to make the finals like any year, but if we don’t it’s not the end of the world – provided we’ve achieved some goals we wanted to achieve,” Hayes said.
“You can’t judge everything necessarily on win-loss ratios.
“It is also the journey you take and we have plans in place to achieve in some areas and they will be just as important.”
