NEW Gawler Eagles senior coach Andrew Burgess said his plan for the club starts from the ground up, and with record numbers attending recent junior trials, the goal is to become the north’s premier soccer club.
Burgess said his relationship with the Gawler club came from meeting committee president Joe Ridenti prior to his Vipers clashing with the Eagles in a battle for promotion in 2019.
“10 months later I get a call from Joe asking what I’m up to,” he said.
“We sat down for a chat and he explained how he’d like me to bring my whole coaching team with me – so we’re here and ready to build something.
“Mario Caruso and Daniel Blanco are excellent, highly-qualified coaches that I believe will help take Gawler to that next step.”
Burgess said he has had multiple stints as technical director at previous clubs, and that experience in an all-encompassing role
has given him a great idea about creating a successful club from top-to-bottom.
“I believe in the juniors in Gawler – in three years’ time I’d like to have a core group of Gawler boys in our first team,” he said.
“At our trials last week we had 30 under-14 and under-16 boys come out, and we picked six of them for the under-18s – that’s a massive win for us, because they’ll have four years in under-18s to grow and develop.
“The goal is to identify young talent, because the catchment area around Gawler and Karbeethan Reserve is massive, and there’s houses being built right next to it, so we want all those boys playing football for us with our quality coaches guiding them all the way through.
“We had 53 players rock up to reserves trials, and 70 for the under-18s – it’s huge, and now we need to turn those numbers into high-quality footballers.”
Burgess said he is in this for the long haul, and while things can change quickly, he has no plans of coaching anywhere else in the future.
“I’ve always said I want to be a career coach, and speaking with Joe, I believe I can do that with this club,” he said.
“I’m a 53-year-old man with two children, so I obviously can’t do it forever, but in five years’ time I’d love to be in a position where I’m still here and the club is thriving, and we can start planning to pass the reins to Daniel and Mario – that’s how I visualize it.
“Our vision is to play attractive football that is uniform across all our ages and grades, so that way we can create a pathway for our youngsters to keep climbing the ranks within the club without having to keep playing in different
systems.
“Ultimately we want to build the Eagles into the best club in the northern suburbs – there’s some good competition in Modbury Jets, Modbury Vista, Playford and Salisbury United, so there’s a lot of work to do, but that’s what I’m here for.”