Hi everyone,
As many of you may already know (or not even..), I am the current Australian U21 coach. I have been involved in the National Team since season 9 when my very own player Dell'Asta was on the path to the National Team. I have become addicted to training since and have had another player go to the National Team (McArthur) and another through the U21 team (Ton). In short, I know what it takes to get players to the national team.
The last two seasons have been a bit of a whirlwind in terms of talent and game shape. It's unfortunate that most of our best players in the last 2 seasons have only been perennial all-star, meaning they would never make the national team. However when I took over, the crop of 18 and 19 year olds were quite good, and the current squad have a lot more players with higher ceilings and a few may well move on to the National Team. This crop is the most exciting I've seen in a good while, and I fully intend on taking advantage of my hard work in my first term by bringing this team to glory.
I will be changing my tactic slightly this season regarding the management of the team. The first term I worked quite individually, micromanaging the team and ensuring I got exactly what I wanted out of it for this season and the next, if I were to be re-elected. This time round however, I will be adding willing managers, restarting the mentoring program, getting them to join our mentoring section in the off-site forum and handing them specific tasks to complete around mentoring of players, training, regular updates and such.
This should prepare Australia for their next U21 coach after I'm gone.
I don't want to sound like I'm repeating the speech by our Israeli friend above, but my focus has always been defense. The players I trained for the NT were all great defensive players, and my mentoring has been no different. Defense has always been a strong point for our team, and will continue to be.
Because we are a small nation (under 600 managers), we need to ensure our best talent is trained properly. We don't have the luxury of a larger country such as Israel and their 1000 managers getting draft picks to pick talent from. Even looking at the ABBL draft, it was terrible. We need to maintain focus with training, and ensure that our best talents don't go wasted.
However I will always advise individuals to train players for the benefit of their team, not for the National Team, unless they are willing to make that sacrifice. Too often I have seen managers blindly training their young players to points where it has crippled their team. I don't want that and will never encourage it, unless it is part of some scheme...
I am also heavily involved in the Australian community, and up until this season was part of the Fishbowl Private League, the largest in Australia, with around 50 Australian teams battling it out for supremacy.
I am currently in tank mode for my own team, having sold off all my trained players, I am going back to my roots and buying a few young Aussie trainees to take all the way back to the ABBL. This means I have plenty of time for the National Team, and I intend on having 3 U21 stars I trained for the next U21 Manager at the next election!
A bit about me, I'm also 26, a father of one boy and a loving husband. I work for one of the largest technology companies in the world as a sales manager, so I'm usually really busy, but I love Buzzerbeater and what I love most about it is training and seeing players go from nothing to superstars. I've built many great relationships in the past few seasons with managers whilst watching their younglings grow, I and would really love to continue serving the Australian community.
Whatever the result of the election, I will always be involved in the national team, as I have been since day 1 when I joined BB.
Thanks,
Iwen