Curley excited at Bulldogs squad but focused on hard work

NEW South Fremantle coach Todd Curley is excited by the playing group he is inheriting at the Bulldogs and sees the potential there to be a strong unit in 2015, but is fully aware that nothing is guaranteed and that only hard work will bring about success.

Curley was last week appointed as the new South Fremantle coach for the 2015 and 2016 WAFL seasons with the option of continuing in 2017 as well and the former Collingwood, Western Bulldogs and West Perth defender has every reason to like the look of the squad he will be in charge of.

The dual West Perth premiership player and 118-game AFL veteran who then coached the Falcons for three years before three seasons as an assistant with Fremantle has cast a keen eye over the South Fremantle team in the second half of the season.

He has been impressed not only with now seeing the Bulldogs win four straight matches, but with the depth of the exciting talent.

There is the top-level stars like Ashton Hams, Ryan Cook, Haiden Schloithe, James Sellar and Ben Saunders along with leaders Craig White, Paul Mugambwa and Adam Guglielmana, and Dylan Ross, Nick Borovac, Haiden Schloithe, Alistair Gillespie, Brock Higgins and Jarrod Parry who have gone to the next level.

There is then youngsters Tim Kelly, Brendan Verrier, Steven Verrier, Zac Strom, Jacob Martinez and Ben Sokol who look capable of being long-term quality players.

All of that is a large reason why Curley was quick to accept the position to coach South Fremantle and he now is focused on putting plans in place that will see that group reach their potential.

“I think it’s an exciting group with quite a large group of emerging young players who have had some success at lower levels together coming through, but also some experienced players who are still also pretty young relatively,” Curley said.

“It’s a pretty young list and pretty well balanced already. I’m looking forward to getting amongst it. There’s certainly some talent there so we will put a program in place that we believe can get them to improve as quickly as we can.

“We will be focused on that improvement coming from within and if there is a potential player who can help us significantly that we could bring in, we would look at that but our focus will be on our own.”

As a player, Curley played in the 1995 and 2003 premierships with West Perth while also leading the Falcons to two finals series as a coach and playing in four finals campaigns in the AFL with the Western Bulldogs including two preliminary finals in 1997 and 1998.

So Curley is well and truly accustomed to being part of finals bound teams throughout his 20 years of involved with top-level football, but over that time he also has seen things drastically improve, and fall off track, over pre-season campaigns and that’s where his focus now lies for South Fremantle.

“A lot of hard work will need to happen now from the first day of pre-season to then even qualify to play finals. Hopefully we can improve significantly over the summer, but my experience at WAFL level tells me that things can actually change pretty quickly over summer in a good and bad way.

“We’ll be doing everything we can to try and improve, and the first thing is preparing for Round 1 now and trying to start in a positive manner.”

When Curley coached West Perth between 2006 and 2008, he had only just retired as a player so it was all a learning and developing experience, but now with three years there under his belt and three years in the AFL system, he has learned a lot and will do some things differently this time around.

“What I have learnt along the journey is that man management is a big issue and that’s probably my main focus,” he said.

“If they aren’t happy then it doesn’t matter what game plan you have, you won’t have success. We want a really happy vibrant group that wants to do something together as a team, and it will be all about the team. That’s our focus and what I’ll be trying to make happen before anything.”

With Paul Hasleby still in charge at South Fremantle until the season finishes and with the Bulldogs on a four-game winning run heading into the final round clash with Peel, Curley won’t start getting things rolling until after the season but he is already putting his plans together.

“I’ll stay away until the season is finished and they have been in a really positive place the last six to eight weeks playing some good footy, and they seem to have built some really good chemistry and confidence,” Curley said.

“Obviously Hase is committed to coaching out the year so I think it would be more disruptive if I got involved now. I would rather let him finish off the season well like he is doing and then we can sit down to have a quick chat, and that gives me a bit of a head start to begin my planning.”