Jeff Hanson, Narrandera Argus

The Hume League finals beckoned in 2021, and after the season was cut short due to the Covid-19 pandemic, many footballing pundits were predicting the Lockhart Demons to be a powerhouse in 2022.

Unfortunately, it could be the complete opposite for the Demons, with Mitch Carroll stepping down as coach, while an exodus of players was headlined by best and fairest winner Jordan Harrington joining Dederang-Mt Beauty.

Blake Jones, Andrew Emery, Jesse Margosis and Alex Smith have also found new homes and Lockhart are yet to replace their outgoing talent.

In good news, former Azzi Medal winner, two-time club best and fairest and former coach, Nathan McPherson will return as a non-playing coach in 2022.

McPherson was previously playing coach of the Demons in 2008-09 and non-playing for one season in 2019, and while he admitted it was an unorthodox appointment, he said he was there to help the club through what he expected to be a rocky period.

“This is my third stint but I’m here because the club is struggling a little bit at the moment,” McPherson said.

“A fair few players left after last year and for now, we need to regroup and get all the locals back on board.”

McPherson admitted 2022 would have hurdles and he stressed that player development and the club’s future was his primary focus.

“It is quite a strong league, and being so close to Albury, you get a lot of good players coming out, but not as many come as far as Lockhart because they need to go past six to eight towns to get here,” McPherson said.

“At the moment, our goal is to concentrate on our young kids. We want to get some game time into them.

“We probably aren’t going to be finals contenders because we lost to many players, but now it is about looking after our locals and getting experience under the belts of those young kids.”

The Ganmain product is confident a hard-working Lockhart committee will help the football club through a tough year, and he believes the future looks bright for the Demons.

“That’s the reason I took the job. The committee have plans in place for the next few years, and my job is to help the club get over this hurdle because our future is bright,” McPherson said.

“We are still looking for players, and we will look to recruit some talent but for us, it will mainly be about getting some of those older blokes back to help our young talent coming through.”

Fielding both senior football sides is also high on McPherson’s agenda, and while preseason training hasn’t attracted too many players just yet, the veteran coach was confident things would turn around.

“We are hoping to fill all grades and we are still working through that,” McPherson said.

“We have a meeting with the committee next week and we will see what we have got.

“We started training two weeks ago, but we are not getting great numbers, but we want two teams, and we will look at all of our options.

“We are lucky because our juniors and netball are quite strong, but we need to just get through this tough little period.”

With the Demon’s preseason well under way for the footballers, Lockhart’s netballers officially hit the court next week.

Readers can pick up next Thursday’s Narrandera Argus to read about the Demon’s chances in 2022 and see what their coach Jemima Norbury’s has to say.

This article appeared in the Narrandera Argus, 27 January 2022.