Miners bury year of pain

By Jarrod Potter
PUTTING last season’s lacklustre result behind them, Berwick Miners head coach Mel Martin and quarterback/captain Andrew Nixon believe success is about to come.
“Like every coach in every pre-season, I expect us to go well,” Martin said.
“We’ll give the more experienced teams a bit of trouble this year.”
Last season the Miners’ line-up was decimated by injuries and retirements, forcing players to play whole games out of their regular positions and for longer periods of match time.
“From 2009 to 2010 we lost 29 blokes,” Martin said, “we didn’t have the rookies coming in to replace the retiring players.
“It’s an incredibly tough game to play both ways.”
To improve upon last year’s winless season, quarterback/captain Andrew Nixon believes their success will be built on strengthened bonds forged from the luckless 2010 competition.
“The best thing to come out of last year is we created a good core of players and great team values. We really wanted to create that mateship you only get from team sports,” Nixon said.
The Miners will play on a new field adjacent to the current ground at Sydney Pargeter Reserve, with a $350,000 grant from the City of Casey being used to put floodlights, a scoreboard and a canteen at the new field.
“The grant is fantastic. We’ve been at the ground for 22 years and it’s the first major improvement there,” Martin said.
“It means the Miners will have one of only a few dedicated gridiron grounds in Australia, which is great for the sport.”
The fixture for the 2011 Gridiron Victoria season will be released tomorrow with the season starting on 7 May.