Laurimar’s senior men will move to Northern Football Netball League’s division two after last year’s grand final victory.
Head coach Jimmy Atkins said it was an exciting move.
“Everyone’s excited about a new challenge,” he said.
“Obviously we go up a division and there’s a lot of unknowns.
“We’re not really sure how it’s going to pan out, but we know that we’re just going to worry about ourselves and play our best footy.”
The club retained most players and all coaching staff.
“We haven’t recruited too many players. We’ve had a few new kids walk through the door and we’ve picked up a couple in the past couple of weeks,” Atkins said.
“But we’ve stayed pretty much the same and that was one of the big goals.
“We’ve got a young group, and the group got it done last year so we wanted to reward them this year.”
Laurimar will unveil its grand final flag in round two against Lower Plenty.
“Every week’s a special week for us. We get to play footy which we’re very lucky to do,” Atkins said.
“But round two we get to unveil the flag from last year so that’ll be a special day.”
The Power return to the Whittlesea Showgrounds, the site of their grand final victory, in round one against Whittlesea on April 6.
The Laurimar senior women’s side have had a change at the helm with new head coach Shane Munn.
Coming from a background in Thai boxing, this is his first coaching experience.
“My three little girls brought me across,” he said.
“I want them to play a lot of women’s sports and I applied to coach the under 10s. The senior women’s just popped up as an option.
“I thought to myself it might be a good opportunity to start at the top level and see how it operates.”
Laurimar have seven new players and Munn said preseason went well.
“We’ve got a lot of new faces this year, a lot of first-time players,” he said.
“There’s been a lot of positive feedback from the girls and the preseason just went really well.”
Munn said his focus for the season was developing a high-pressure team and ensuring respect on and off the field.
He also hoped for community support.
“I just hope we can get the support from everyone around us because at the moment I feel like not a lot of people know when we play and I’d like them to come down and see how fun and exciting the women’s is,” he said.
The Laurimar senior women face North Heidelberg in round one of the NFNL division three women’s league on April 14.
