An excerpt from Don Pyke’s Club Champion speech on Friday evening.

Where are we going in 2019?

I sat down earlier in the week and had a look at the magnets on my board and a big smile came across my face.

Because I looked at the available talent we have as a group, and I looked at what’s the possibility and potential of this group to return ourselves to being one of the powerhouses of this competition, and it’s real.

The players can feel it, we know it. We need to do the work, but it’s there. It’s real.

When I look at our season this year and look at the opportunities of what we’ve been able to develop, I know it stands us in great stead for next season.

I look at our backline … the emergence of Tom Doedee, the development of Wayne Milera to take another step. Late in the season we saw Alex Keath come in as well as the continued high performance of someone like Rory Laird and Luke Brown.

In our midfield, we introduced Hugh Greenwood. He plays 22 games for the first time in a season. Well I met Hugh two-and-a-half years ago he just come off paddling the boards of the University of New Mexico and here he is now playing a full AFL season. Playing in a way which we know will help us create winning in big games and has done already.

Cam Ellis-Yolmen coming off the back of a knee reco’. Played more games this year than he had in his career prior. A young man that’s really taking great strides not only as a player, but as a person in our community. And Paul Seedsman who had a breakout year and stepped up and played some outstanding footy for us as well as the addition of Bryce Gibbs.

Down forward we see Jordy Gallucci, a guy we drafted two years ago, come in and play a lot of games of footy and towards the end really started having an impact on a game. Introduced Lachie Murphy off the rookie list, a great story. This time last year he was just out there training his ass off to see if he could get a spot on the list and he comes in and plays a number of games, plays to a really high standard and knows at the end of the year he’s a better player than he was at the start of the year. Look forward to his development.

Myles Poholke the same, and Darcy Fogarty we saw as a young man we drafted at Pick 12 last year, comes in and gets a taste of what AFL footy is about. He now knows what’s required. He walks out of the room and understands on his break what it looks like for him to take the step up to be the player he wants to become. And the emergence of someone like Josh Jenkins. As we saw, the leading goalkicker, but his presence in the game grows and continued to grow throughout the year. And none of those players sit in our leadership group or what you might classify as our core group. But that’s why I’m excited.

We’re going to see the return of Brodie Smith and Brad Crouch. We’re going to see the return to full health of our two senior leaders in Rory Sloane and Tex Walker. And you put all those magnets on the board and go home and do the exercise and see how you go picking your first 22 for next year. That internal competition will drive standards and will drive our behavior and it will drive the way we train to get ourselves back to playing a consistent, winning brand of footy.