By Tara Murray
East Sunbury is hoping the improvement will come from within in this year’s Essendon District Football League division 2 season.
The Thunder had a break out season in 2018 that included the club’s first finals appearance, first finals win and first grand final.
While the season ended in grand final heartache against Roxburgh Park, it was still a massive year of positives for the Thunder.
Thunder coach Glenn Hopkins said they would look to build on the foundations of last year.
Hopkins took over as Thunder coach mid way through last year, when Steve Grey suddenly quit.
“The beauty is that of the grand final players, 10 of them were still under-20,” he said.
“There’s still a lot of development and teaching to be done..
“It’s exciting as I’ve got time to work on a lot of things I didn’t get time to work on last year as it was so close to finals.
“I want to put my stamp on the club.”
Hopkins said while he would look to add more of his style to the Thunder’s game plan, he said they would still remain the fast running team that had so much success last year.
“We were excellent in the finals with that open brand of football,” he said.
“Playing on big grounds suits the way we want to play our football.”
Hopkins said there had been some really good enthusiasm on the track, with the playing group ready to go again.
The Thunder resumed pre-season training last week.
On the player front, the Thunder will have a similar line up to last year with little movement on the recruiting front.
The Thunder has lost gun midfielder Brad Bernacki, while ruckman Jorden Braddy is another likely not to return.
Hopkins said both would be big losses.
“Brad is not only a big loss on the field, but he’s a great guy as well,” he said.
“Jorden is training at Aberfeldie and working up to the practice matches. He’s pretty positive, he’s doing well up there and even though we’ll miss him, hopefully he stays at Aberfeldie.”
The Thunder are yet to announce any new signings for this year.
Hopkins said they were still in discussions with a number of players about coming acorss.
“Hopefully we’ll sign a couple more recruits in the next couple of weeks,” he said.
“We are looking at a ruckman and we’re close to signing one from country Victoria.
“We don’t think we need too many players.”
