Woodend-Hesket’s Daniel Toman blistering season has been recognised winning the Bowen Medal for the Riddell District Football League’s best and fairest.
The midfielder had a fantastic season also being named on the ball in the RDFL team of the year.
“It’s good to get a bit of recognition for a pretty consistent year, so I’m happy,” Toman said.
“You never know really, how the umpires are going to vote, but I thought I had a pretty consistent year so I went in with a bit of a chance.
“I thought I was pretty consistent in most games.”
Toman only returned back to his juniors club, the Hawks, for this season after spending time in the Ballarat Football League.
“It’s been unreal, I’ve got a lot of mates still at the club and my brother Ben was playing there this year,” he said.
“It was just a really enjoyable year, probably the most enjoyable year I’ve ever had.”
The 2023 season was the Hawks return to finals football for the first time in over a decade, and return to a grand final for the first time in 15 years. Yet fell agonisingly short of a premiership as they were defeated by Diggers Rest in the last match of the season.
“All credit to Diggers, they played really well and were much better than us on the day,” Toman said.
“They’ve been building for a couple of years even though the results haven’t been there, they’ve got a good list together at the moment.
“There’s a lot of depth at the club at the moment which is shown by a couple of the blokes who missed out on playing in the grand final.
“One bloke played pretty much the whole year and then got dropped and there’s another young fella who’s going to be something special, and neither of them made it to the grand final team so it shows we have a lot of depth there and big things are on the horizon, hopefully.”
While the best in league medal is something Toman will be sure to cherish, he said he would “definitely” be trading it in to have a premiership medallion around his neck.
The Hawks just recently announced that their captain, Alistar Rae, will coach the club for the 2024 season.
Rae was named captain in his second year at the Hawks after moving from Essendon District Football League club Strathmore, and has been assistant coach for the last two seasons under Pound. Rae will be stepping down from his role of captain but will maintain his spot in the starting 22.
“He’s been around the club for six years now and he really buys into the club so he’ll be good, I think he’s going to have some pretty handy assistants too so it’ll be good,” Toman said.
Teammates of Toman Stapleton took out the seniors best defender in the league while Rae and Saxon Gardner were awarded runners up best defenders.
