Wangaratta Rovers' coach Daryn Cresswell says he's had to do more teaching than when he took over Wodonga Raiders four years ago.
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The Hawks landed the recruiting coup of the off-season, luring Cresswell after he was originally going to have the year off following his transformation of Raiders from easybeats to a premiership force.
"At Raiders we had great experience, we had the Heta (Dean and Hayden) boys, Todd Grayson, Matty Derrick, Matty Murray, Matt McDonald, who had played a lot of footy so there wasn't as much teaching involved," he said.
"Raven Jolliffe, Tom McCaffrey, Matt Medcraft, Tristan Lenaz and the thirds boys coming up, they're really young in terms of footy, I think Raven might be the oldest, so there's a lot more goes into teaching our boys and how we want them to play.
"There's a lot more whiteboard (highlighting the way we want to play), walk throughs, videos, a lot more of how we want to look."
Raiders had won three games the year before Cresswell took over, contesting four straight finals campaigns in his stint.
The Hawks haven't won a game since round 18, 2017.
League medallist Ed Dayman, the pacy Jack Gerrish and Sam Allen, the son of Rovers' 362-gamer Matt, will take the step up from the under 18s premiership squad.
"Sam has an absolute elite kick on him and when I say elite, he's in the upper echelon of players I've coached in the Ovens and Murray," Cresswell enthused.
"He's a very good user of the footy, but he's a quiet lad, he's still got to use his voice a bit more, being young, he gets himself in really good positions and doesn't get used.
"He's got a lot of potential and could be a very good player for the club for a long time."
The Hawks have suffered a double body blow though with veteran Sean O'Keeffe set to miss at least eight weeks with a long-running finger complaint, which forced him to miss last season, while Coen Hennessy had foot surgery, which will sideline him for half the season.
If ever a club didn't want injuries, it was a rebuilding one after a winless season.
It's accentuated by the fact the Hawks are away to premiers Albury on Saturday.
"First of all we've got to get back to being a competitive outfit, I mean quite clearly last year we weren't," he said.
"We've done a lot of training on our work without the footy, just defending the ball and obviously when we get it, we've done a lot of work on moving it and trying to get it into positions where we can hurt the opposition.
"In terms of what I expect, I'm not really sure."
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