Former AFL premiership player Shannon Grant will coach Greenvale in the Essendon District Football League for the next two years.
Grant, whose coaching experience includes being an assistant at the Western Bulldogs and coaching VFL sides Frankston and Bendigo Bombers, replaces Adam McPhee.
Jets secretary Ken Hutchinson said McPhee – who missed the last seven weeks of the 2014 season because of family commitments overseas – decided last week he would not stay at the club.
“He was going to continue,” Hutchinson said. “He’s moving to Barwon Heads and was going to come back and forth but realised it would be too much.”
From there, things moved quickly for the Jets, who first considered assistant coach Stephen Paxman before choosing Grant.
Paxman coached the side while McPhee was overseas.
“That was the first step, to see if he [Paxman] wanted the role,” Hutchinson said.
“But he will be overseas for five weeks next season.
“He said it wouldn’t be fair for him to coach so he’ll stay on as an assistant.
“To get Shannon is fantastic for the club. A former player of ours, Dennis Bicer, worked with him at the Bulldogs and mentioned to us he may be interested.
“From there Bruce [Kent, the president] had a phone call with him and we met him for an interview on Tuesday.
“The deal was done in a very short period of time. If we hadn’t got Shannon we would have had to start from scratch and advertise the job.”
In other coaching news, division 1 side Tullamarine is hoping to have a new coach in the coming weeks.
The division 1 runners-up originally reappointed Ash Manning.
“We had a change of direction,” Demons president Andrew Fischer said.
“There were a couple of circumstances we had to address, but we’re now looking to the future.”
Fischer said there were at least seven applicants for the job.
“It’s been a bit of both, playing and non-playing applicants,” he said.
“We made a grand final and have a good core of blokes.”
He said a major focus for the club was bringing younger players back to Tullamarine.
“We want to get juniors in the 16-18 age bracket back to the club,” he said.
“We look like we’ll have an under-16 team next season and want to rebuild the under-18 side.
“We had neither this year.”
