By Nicholas Galea
Dashing half back Mia Muscat and versatile forward Teagan Bradley have recommitted to the Coburg Football Club after they each signed one-year extensions, locking them in for the 2022 season.
Muscat who was runner up in Coburg’s inaugural Women’s Best and Fairest and the Lion of the Round against the St Kilda Sharks in Round Nine, was excited with how far the group had come in its first season and highlighted the friendships that had been formed were her main reasons to stay with the club.
“I think, to see how far we’ve come as a first-year team, I think it makes me want to stay at Coburg because I see us succeeding and going places, and I really want to leave a legacy at Coburg with all these amazing people,” Muscat said.
“I just love Coburg for the community that we have there… We’re not just footy friends anymore, we are good friends in general and we have really good community.”
Bradley, who alternated her time between the midfield and forward line, finished equal third on the goal kicking with six, and too reiterated she was proud of what the team had achieved and that she couldn’t wait to be a part of it all again in 2022.
“I was just amazed by how well Coburg worked together as a team, obviously all the girls came from different places and we all had different backgrounds as such, you could even say different abilities or skills but we all just clicked really well and I just really enjoyed the coaching aspect and the whole team down at Coburg,” she said.
“There is a bit of unfinished business considering the fact we didn’t get to finish off the season and give the finals a red-hot crack like we hoped for but I couldn’t pass up such a good opportunity to experience what I had this year and want to do it again next year.”
“When I think about it, it is an amazing opportunity and real honour in a way.”
After a promising debut season in the South Eastern Women’s Football League (SEWFL) which saw the team finish in fifth place and qualify for finals footy, Muscat believes that 2021 is a steady base to build off and is optimistic that 2022 will be another step in the right direction.
“I think we really will go places next year because we’ve learned a lot this year, and I think from what we’ve learnt we will carry [those lessons] on into next year,” Muscat said.
“I think we can only build from there as well; we’re only going to get better and be improving.”
Bradley also believed that the impressive amount of growth the team had over the course of the season would leave them in good stead for next year and that there was plenty of improvement left in them.
“If you compare one of our practice matches from the very start of the season to the midway point of the year or to one of the last games we played, together as a team we all just gelled so well,” Bradley said.
“We were all just starting to learn how each other plays, each other’s strengths and weaknesses and how we can work off each other and we can expect from them… Next year we are going to be so much stronger than this season and it’s just great to see the improvement that we have had.”
Coburg fans can get excited as they can expect more news on further player re-signings for season 2022 across our Men’s and Women’s teams to be announced in the coming weeks by following the Coburg Football Club’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages.
#WeAreCoburg #LeadUniteLeaveALegacy
