Dale takes Wickers challenge

By Brad Kingsbury
BERWICK Football Club has announced that Glenn Dale will be its new non-playing coach for 2009.
The announcement was made after an exhaustive selection process that saw Pakenham’s Michael Holland and Frankston assistant coach Tony Blackford among the candidates.
Dale, 35, spent 2003 as an assistant coach to former AFL star Dean Rice with Wonthaggi Football Club in the West Gippsland Latrobe league after spending the majority of his playing career in the Eastern Football League with then division one clubs Scoresby and Clayton.
Berwick finished second last after a rocky year with coach Ronnie Burns stepping down late in the season, ending the experiment of flying in players from Darwin on a weekly basis.
While he lives in Rowville, Dale has a business in Berwick and is also the brother-in-law of senior player Andrew Tuck and certainly has an idea of the challenge ahead.
“I know there’s a fair bit of work to do to get the club back on track, but that’s a challenge I’m looking forward to,” he said.
While he is yet to assess the current playing list, Dale is well aware of the talent in the club’s emerging junior group and said it was a good start.
“It’s one of the reasons I took the job on,” he said.
“I will be looking to add high-quality recruits from the Eastern Football League and that area but there’s a good base of juniors to work with for sure.”
Dale said his cousin Paul Dale would join him as an assistant with other officials to be announced shortly.