Tara Murray
New Sunbury Kangaroos coach Leigh Sporle has landed his dream job, appointed the club’s senior coach for next year’s Essendon District Football League division 1 season.
Sporle, who played 250 games at the Kangaroos and is a life member of the club, was announced the club’s new coach on Monday.
Sporle replaces Anthony Leydin as Kangaroos coach, with Leydin stepping down due to work and family commitments having coached the side since 2017.
For Sporle returning to the Kangaroos is like returning home. He started playing football at club in under-18s, only leaving in the back end of his career when he wanted to learn the ropes of coaching.
“I was a bit worried about applying, as I have been out of coaching for so long,” he said.
“This role tugged at the heart strings. If I had the choice of any club, this was the club that I wanted to coach.
“They’ve got good support and they have all their ducks lined up and are very professional.”
Most recently, Sporle was co-coach at Rockank in 2017 and previously coached the side in 2013.
Sporle had been keen to get into coaching since last year after work changes allowed him to commit the time, which forced him out of coaching at the end of 2017.
He applied for one coaching role last year but missed out, while he offered his time to help out East Sunbury in an assistant coach/runner role to get back into football for the cancelled 2019 season.
Sporle said the timing was right for him to get back into coaching.
“I’ve been back from Queensland for the best part of two years,” he said.
“The time was right with the house and family.
“The family is happy I got the job. The girls were running around the house celebrating.”
Sporle takes on a Kangaroos side that is facing a new challenge of playing in division 1 for the first time, after winning the division 2 premiership in 2019.
He said there was still a little bit of unknown of what will happen next season with COVID-19, but he was keen to start get things underway.
There’s several familiar faces at the Kangaroos, with Sporle playing with a handful of players in his playing days.
He’s also a Sunbury local.
“I still watched a few games last year so I know who most of the players are.”
Sporle said he had already spoken with last year’s leadership group to get some internal thoughts and would look to have more conversations in the coming weeks.
He hoped they could continue to have success in the coming years.
“We need to look at the list,” he said.
“I know there are a few under-18s that they potentially wanted to blood. We’ll look at the list and work out what positions we want to fill.
“I’ll work my backside off to support the players in both football and netball. I’m in it for the long haul.”
