Tara Murray
Sometimes things happen for a reason and that is the case for new Newport coach Josh Russo.
Russo didn’t plan to coach the Western Region Football League division 2 club this year, but some changes off field meant everything aligned.
The club announced Russo, who was an assistant coach the last few years, as senior coach on Thursday hours after he signed.
Russo said he was excited to be given the opportunity.
“I am very excited and honoured to be given the opportunity,” he said.
“I’ve been around the club for a little bit and things were able to work out for me to be able to coach and it’s exciting.”
Russo is no stranger to senior coaching roles having coached at Coburg Districts and at Altona, where he was a premiership captain.
He said he had always wanted to coach again, it was about the timing.
“I feel once you are a coach, you’re always a coach,” he said.
“Life throws a lot of curves and challenges, which prevented me from coaching the last few years
“The opportunity came up and it worked with my work life balance.”
Russo said his phone had been running hot since the announcement with a lot of buzz around the club and the playing group.
He said a lot of hard work had already been done behind the scenes to re-sign this year’s playing group.
Russo said having been part of the club the last few years, he had some idea where things were at.
“There are areas we need to improve and the things we need to do differently,” he said “We want to improve and hopefully I’ll do a good job.”
Russo said he won’t be making wholesale changes, knowing that it will be a work in progress.
He said they would look to try and address some of their consistency issues. The side finished in fifth spot, percentage outside the top four.
“We’ll look at improving the professionalism and the standards,” he said. “Professionalism dictates consistency.
“The more you do the little things right and do it more frequently, it helps with consistency.
“We’ll look to get some fresh faces and have some new ideas and hopefully that breeds a bit of success next year.
Russo said he was also looking forward to working with the under-18s to help them transition into senior footballers.
He won’t have long to wait to get started with pre-season set to get underway early next month.
Russo said he was keen to get to work.
“Get our hands dirty and get into it,” he said. “We didn’t make finals so we are playing catch up on the teams above.”
