New Roxburgh Park Broadmeadows coach Adam Yates has the best endorsement any new coach can have, his teammates wanted him to have the job.
Yates, who joined the Victorian Sub-District Cricket Association club last season, takes over the role from Mitch Johnstone, who has joined Werribee.
Our earlier report: Adam Yates captain-coach for Roxburgh Park Broadmeadows
Despite looking at candidates from outside the club, the club decided to appoint Yates as captain-coach for the 2015-16 season.
For Yates, the move to the top job wasn’t something he was thinking about when he joined the Falcons – even though he has an extensive coaching record, including with fellow subbies side Yarraville.
“I was hoping to get a new start at the club and hopefully play in a successful side,” Yates said.
“We’ve got a really good foundation from Mitch and I’m really excited for the upcoming season.”
Yates said he started having conversations with the club at Christmas time regarding the possibility of stepping into the role if Johnstone was to leave to pursue his premier cricket dreams.
“It’s reassuring to have the support of the boys, who are a tight-knit bunch of blokes on and off the field.”
He said the success of the past season, in which the team reached the north-west grand final, had brought the players even closer together.
“The experience of playing in the grand final is invaluable and we have got the hunger to go one step further.”
Club president Ben Wood said it was too hard to go past Yates.
“I looked at what he had achieved and it was a lot stronger than what I realised,” Wood said.
“He has very strong on- and off-field relationships and a lot of the senior players were saying that they wanted him as coach.
“I thought, why advertise for the job when we have one of the top half a dozen coaches in the competition and he is happy to take the role?
“Adam is considered a deep thinker of the game and within the association’s upper echelon of tactical-strategic game-day thinkers.”
Yates’s experience at the club in the season just gone will be valuable in the role.
On the field, Yates is something of a batting all-rounder but it is his prowess as a coach that will take the side forward.
“He learnt and adapted to the conditions at Lakeside, which can be hard for batsmen,” Wood said.
“He is an elite talent … you don’t appreciate it until you see him in the nets.
“Having been here, he already knows the players’ strengths and weaknesses and he understands our program, which runs differently from other clubs.”
The club is hoping to add a couple of experienced batsmen to the side.
