The 29-year-old midfielder, who won two Farrer league premierships with The Rock-Yerong Creek, is the latest addition to a Saints side now under the leadership of Peter Cook.

Albury-based Saddler played for Turvey Park in the Riverina league this season but as the father to a three-month-old son, playing closer to home in the Hume league made perfect sense.

"It's definitely a new chapter for me," Saddler said.

"We were living in Albury this year and I was travelling to Wagga so I trained one night a week with Thurgoona.

"I had a chat to them but my wife's a Burrumbuttock girl and it was the family connection that got Brock over the line for me.

"I spoke to (assistant coach) Matty Seiter and he's a ripper bloke. It sounds like a good family club and that's where we're at right now.

"The club's definitely looking to be on the rise.

"It sounds like they've signed a couple of handy footballers and they've got a couple more they're talking to. Rather than just going out and recruiting 10 footballers, they're looking for positional acquisitions, signing blokes to fill certain roles they've struggled with in the last few years.

"They're pretty confident that they're going to be pushing deep into finals and it was exciting for me to hear where the club wants to go."

Saddler reached a preliminary final with Caloundra during his time playing in Division 1 of the Queensland Football Association.

"It was a really good standard of footy, one step below the QAFL, and I was lucky enough to captain the club in my last year there, which was fantastic," he said.

"I played at The Rock for eight years, won a couple of flags and was assistant coach there in 2017.

"A good mate of mine was coaching Turvey Park this year and I was his assistant coach.

"We had a weird year, started a bit slow but then knocked off the top two teams in the run home so we were coming good but COVID put a dampener on that.

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"But it was a massive year for me with the responsibility of assistant coaching and travelling.

"It's going to be really refreshing this year just to show up, train and play."

"Andrew's a very experienced campaigner," Seiter said.

"We're excited to have him on board and he adds to our midfield depth and he's someone else who can play dual positions.

"He's been in leadership roles for the last few years but we're looking forward to him concentrating on his football and leading from within the group."

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