Nick Hynes has already kicked 35 goals for Dederang-Mt Beauty in the TDFL

Hynes has already booted 35 goals in four games as the Bombers have won three on the spin since losing to Yackandandah in round one.

By the 26-year-old's own admission, 2021 was a poor year in front of goals and he's now feeling the benefits of a good pre-season.

And that's something which hasn't gone unnoticed, with cricket commitments at St Patrick's and his day job as a pest controller having often kept Hynes off the track in previous years.

"This is my sixth year juggling both sports and it still seems pretty full-on," Hynes said.

"Even through COVID we did pretty much a full cricket pre-season and it was the first pre-season I've done in about six years.

"I get plenty of grief from 'DJ' (Bombers coach Damien Jones) on the footy side.

"Because we train on Monday and Wednesday in pre-season for footy and summer's our busiest time of the year for work, I sometimes don't get there on a Monday and I blow up if I do two training sessions a week for footy and cricket.

"Damien gives me a lot of stick and so does big Gus (MacLeod) but they get over it pretty quick once I actually start turning up to training two times a week during the footy season.

"It's the same both ways; I won't go to a cricket pre-season during the footy season.

"I try to make it work but I'm never going to keep everyone happy."

Hynes booted 21 majors in the Bombers' huge win over Wahunyah in round two, finding the sort of metronomic accuracy which eluded him last season.

"That game certainly was different," he said.

"It was more of an exclamation mark that we kicked 63.12.

"I think we kicked three behinds in the second half so that blew it out a bit more than what it seemed.

"Having the ball down our end for 95 percent of the game, I've never played in a game like it.

"That confidence didn't take long to build up.

"I've certainly never had a day when I've kicked like that.

"I only kicked two behinds so I was in shock as much as everyone else.

"Last year, I was kicking poorly.

"More often than not, I'd kick more behinds than goals but this year I've fixed a few things up and it's good to get a bit of reward every now and then.

"I've started doing a bit more goal-kicking at training, I was going one-on-one with Elliott Powell for a bit but I've started to look for a new opponent on a Tuesday and Thursday night because he's not keeping up with me."

ALSO IN SPORT

Some impressive recruitment has given the Bombers belief they can make the Tallangatta league finals for the first time since 2013, although their new-look side is still bedding down.

"Jordy Harrington, Blake Jones and Joel Heiner are all pretty handy midfielders," Hynes said.

"We got lucky with the Brodie brothers as well, so we got ourselves a ruckman and a very handy centre half-back.

"They're all ripper fellas and good footballers too, so that helps.

"We could really do a bit of damage in the second half of the year, once a few of those new faces get a bit more comfortable in how we play and what we do.

"It's pretty different playing with nine new blokes, even 'Sporty' Ardern, you're still learning things about the club, weeks in, how to play with blokes, what they want to do and especially for me, your leading patterns and stuff like that.

"It's pretty hard to work out when you've got eight different blokes kicking it to you and they all have different ideas.

"A lot of them are midfield and half-forward, so they're all going to kick to me at some stage and I'm just guessing at the minute."

On the cricket field, Hynes picked up 20 wickets from 16 games across first and second grade for St Patrick's.

"Once you're in at St Pat's, it's hard to get out," Hynes said.

"It's one of the better clubs I've ever been at.

"We've got a good group and we probably should have gone better than we did.

"There's no grey area with St Pat's, no egos, no blokes who are there to push people out of the way and try to benefit themselves.

"Everyone's there for the club, no-one gets paid, you're all there to have a good time with some good blokes."

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