Tara Murray
Craigieburn has added some much needed experience with the signing of Bundoora captain Luke Collins.
The Eagles announced the signings of Collins and his younger brother Josh Collins on Wednesday, their first new signings for next year’s Essendon District Football League division 1 season.
Eagles coach Shane Jacobs was thrilled to get the pair across.
He said he’d worked on trying to get Luke, who has also played in the Victorian Football League, across for a while having known him from when they were both at Bundoora.
“I’ve worked on him for a year and half now,” he said. “He let us know the good news a couple of weeks ago.
“He lives just outside of Craigieburn. Josh is only 20, so a bit younger than Luke who is 28.
“He’s [Josh] played regular division 1 football this year.
Jacobs said they had a couple of focuses with their recruiting, which is behind the decision to bring across Luke.
He said the first one was wanting to bring in people that lived locally as it’s hard to bring in players due to the location.
The other was adding a bit more experience.
“We were a very young side at times this year,” he said. “Sometimes we were playing four to five under-18s at once.
“Playing against the better teams you can’t do that. We’ve looked for players who are 27-28 and still have a lot of football left.
“Luke’s leadership will be great for us.”
Jacobs said they would look to announce some more signings in the next few weeks once finals action has finished.
He said they were excited by who they were bringing in.
“It’s always good to get in new faces but we’re not going away from our plan,” he said. “We want to develop what we have got but we need to add some more experienced players to support them.”
