INAUGURAL Essendon AFLW coach Natalie Wood has signed a new two-year deal, tying her to the club until the end of the 2026 NAB AFLW season.
The Bombers are now coming into their third AFLW season, and while they made finals last year, they remain some way off the pace of the very top sides.
>> Win a $70K Toyota in AFLW Fantasy! Sign up NOW
And the bottom 10 sides are coming, and fast, eager to knock off the sides in the top eight.
In a quest for improvement, Wood came into pre-season with a new teaching method and way to restructure the training week, leaning on her teaching background.
"It's been two seasons and three pre-seasons at a really powerful club with lots of great aspects to it. The group of players who have come in the door through our AFLW program over the years and the group we've got now are really well connected and really well driven. It's a real privilege to [sign a new contract and] help lead them," Wood told AFL.com.au.
"It was me putting my teaching and learning hat across the week and just looking at our methodology of education when we're presenting ideas and concepts to the playing group – when they have opportunities for discussion, when they have opportunities to practice our application, then how we review and provide feedback.
"We restructured our day so the training feedback was occurring immediately after coming off the track, which challenged our speed of capturing the right vision and edits, but also what it did was really aligned myself with the other coaches and our IT analysts.
"We would present an idea in the morning, we'd go and train it straight away and then we'd come back and we would review that straight off the track. What we found was the players were more engaged in the conversation because it was more live, rather than waiting two days."
The Bombers were relatively active over the Trade Period, bringing in premiership player Maddi Gay from Melbourne and Gold Coast vice-captain Bess Keaney, who wanted to return to Victoria.
"Steph Cain and Bonnie (Toogood) have been fantastic leaders for us over the two seasons. What we're probably finding is the opportunities for us to have greater on-field leadership and in-depth football leadership," Wood said.
"Maddi comes in as a defender and Bess as a midfielder (wing), it just helps spread the leadership across the field. But they're really experienced footballers. We've had some terrific leaders over the first two years that have really helped us with developing culture and developing high performance and athletic standards.
"We were expecting them to add to our leadership when they came in, but a real credit as to how much of an impact they've actually had in a really short period of time."
Despite the sterling achievement to qualify for finals in an 18-team competition in just its second season (along with Sydney), Essendon's women's program is still incredibly young, and it's a constant wrestle for Wood to not rush.
"It's a constant battle. I describe it as respecting the process and the time it takes to build and grow things, but being urgent in wanting to get there as quick as we can," she said.
"It's a tricky one, we're 21 games into a culture. That's not a great amount of time, and I guess as well, we've created an environment where there's now expectation on us, and that adds to pressure as well. We need to keep improving and we want to be a strong team, but we're still a fair bit off that, but that's definitely our vision."
Developing players across multiple positions has been a key focus over pre-season. The upcoming season will involve a number of four- and five-day breaks, with 11 rounds squeezed into 10 weeks, and squad rotation will be key.
"I think where we'll get really sustainable growth is our squad improving individually. If we get injuries in the wrong areas of the ground, we can be quite vulnerable," Wood said.
"I look back at that Adelaide game (a 47-point loss) – our first quarter was really strong, Daria Bannister was everywhere, linking us from mid to forward, Daria goes down with a concussion at the end of the first quarter, and we couldn't move the ball from the middle to the end.
"In the middle part of the year, we had a number of calf injuries and we were moving a lot of people around. People were being great in terms of their appetite for playing different positions and so forth, but it just meant that we weren't quite as stable, and we weren't quite as competitive for four quarters as what we'd like.
"If we get really good growth in our whole squad, in their primary position but then also we add strings to people's bows and are able to play a second position, then that'll give us more flexibility and be able to be more competitive in the different situations."
