New Sunbury coach Jace Carton said it was exciting times going forward for the Victorian Turf Cricket Association club.
Carton, who had been with Victorian Premier Cricket club Greenvale Kangaroos, was recently announced as the club’s new coach.
Having moved to Sunbury about five years ago, Carton had been following the progress of the club.
“I’m pretty excited about it,” he said.
“I moved to the area and followed them and looked at the results. I knew they had moved to the turf competition and were new in the VTCA and been promoted twice in three years.
“I applied for the role and went for the interview and got it straight away.”
Carton said with most of the playing group returning they had a lot of pieces already in place for next season.
He said they would look at adding a few recruits and were already talking to a number of players and would hopefully announcing a couple of signings soon.
Carton said they were confident of being up there again next season.
“They just missed out on finals after a bit of a rough start when the coach couldn’t commit and a few things didn’t go their way,” he said.
“I think we can fix a couple of things quite quickly. We’ll work on what they have to improve and we’ll look to have a couple of new recruits.
“Being able to play on Clarke Oval will be pretty big for the club as well.”
Carton has a background of working with younger players having been a development coach with the Kangaroos.
He will play a key role as the club looks to have an under-18s team in the future.
“It’s a different type of challenge for myself getting an under-18s side up and started,” he said.
“Being the only turf club in the area, it’s really big thing to have. We will look to attract good players for the under-18s who will be playing a high standard of cricket and then bring them through into seniors.”
Carton said as well as bringing in some new players they would like to add some more coaches as well.
He said with players and coaches with premier cricket experience, it would lift the squad not only on game day but also at training.
“Most of the players wouldn’t have had that structure at training before,” he said.
“We want to make training better, fun and exciting. We’ll start with working on their strengths, and then look at other things.”
As well as a new coach, the club will finally get to play home games at Clarke Oval, with a turf wicket finally installed.
Carton said they can’t underestimate what impact that will have on the club with players being able to play in Sunbury again.
Tara Murray
