THE PLAN was always for Sean Buncle to spend one more year as an assistant coach under Travis Cloke at NAB League club Eastern Ranges before moving on and finding himself a senior opportunity somewhere.
But that opportunity came sooner than expected late last year when all his hard work and development paid off as Port Melbourne plucked him from the Ranges for the plumb role as the Borough’s new VFLW coach.
Port had chosen former Darebin mentor Mitch Skelly, but when he stepped aside inside his first week in the role, the club had to go back to the drawing board.
Buncle’s name wasn’t on that drawing board the first time, but when he applied second time around, he quickly went to the top of the list to replace now St Kilda AFLW assistant Lachie Harris.
The new coach has been tasked with backing up an excellent 10-5 debut season which ended in the elimination final, but he isn’t feeling any extra pressure, trusting that his process will help the wins take care of themselves.
“It’s a massive opportunity for myself and the next step for me coming from NAB League,” Buncle said.
“Head coaching is something I love – I love playing a role as an assistant but this was always going to be the next step so I’m just happy to be here and it has been an awesome experience so far.
“I was committed to Eastern for the year but sitting down with Trav and (talent manager) Danny (Ryan), this was going to be my last year.
“Their philosophy is it is a development league for the coaches as well – we want you to get some experience in different roles and when you’re ready move on and get a better opportunity.
“Maybe it came a little bit out of the blue but it was something I definitely couldn’t pass on.
“We’re focusing on our culture and trying to build up the pathways – we’ve got some really good relationships with Richmond and are building better relationships with Oakleigh.
“We’re trying to roll out some additional things like player welfare – we’re focusing on how we want to play as a club and what we’re about and that culture is massively important.
“We want to be a high performing environment that attracts high quality players and for our players to progress on to other levels.
“I’m not concerned about wins and losses, (but) how we approach training, how our culture is building, the quality of people we’ve got around the group – we’ve got some new coaches and a new player welfare manager we haven’t had before.
“We want to be a successful club and we expect to perform well but we’re not measuring ourselves on wins and losses – you can be a talent-based team or a behaviour-based team and we’re just trying to build up those behaviours and those standards.”
Buncle was involved in the Eastern Ranges for “five or six” years, starting with the under-16 boys before joining the girls’ program when it started in 2017, while he also coached the Eastern league’s under-13 and 15 teams and the Vic Metro Girls under-16s.
He said Port Melbourne’s list was as strong as last year and would benefit from having six players training one night a week with AFLW clubs Richmond and North Melbourne.
“We’ve got 95 per cent of the list signed with some real high-quality players,” he said.
“We’ve had a few who have had some good opportunities to be train-ons (and) those players will get a lot of benefit out of those behaviours and standards from the top level.
“We see our role as a VFLW club to be a high-performing club, but part of that is being a place people know they can come to get better and get opportunities at the top level.
“Nayely Borg is training with North, she is going really well, she’s probably going to be a triple threat in that she can go forward and be dangerous, so we’re pretty excited about her, but we’ve probably got four or five in that boat – Courtney Bromage is training with Richmond as well.
“Port Melbourne is a really professional outfit, the way they set everything up in their footy program made it really easy for me to transition in, they’ve supported me really well, so I think we’re really building towards something.”
