Hazell re-joins Tigers as senior coach

St Bedes / Mentone Tigers Amateur Football Club is pleased to announce Michael Hazell has been appointed senior coach for the 2019 season.

Michael comes to the Tigers with a wealth of playing and coaching experience in the VAFA and VFA/VFL, along with spending time as a player on Collingwood’s supplementary list.

Michael has had a long connection with the VAFA. In a journey where he has experienced both the highs and the lows, he has held senior coaching and under 19 coaching roles in the divisional level of the VAFA, coaching the teams to finals in each year.

He is a triple premiership player across both the lower and higher divisions of the VAFA, including senior premierships at Premier A and Premier B level including the Tigers 2008 Premier A premiership team.

In recent years, Michael was a Board member and then President of the VAFA. During his time at Board level, Michael was responsible for the VAFA representative football program as the director of representative football, which role included holding positions as co-coach and assistant coach for many of the VAFA representative teams including the senior representative team.

In the role as director of representative football, Michael was also responsible for the appointment and management of the coaches within the representative football program.

In appointing Michael, the club was very attracted to his emphasis on coaching the entire club, players and coaches alike.

His coaching model aligned very closely with what the club was looking for in order to create sustainable long term success in the VAFA, not just at the critical senior level, but more broadly across all the teams at our club.

The news comes after the re-appointment of Russell Barnes as reserves coach for next season. Russell led the Big V B-Div 4 side to an incredible victory over South Australia in July.

• St Bedes/Mentone Tigers AFC