Luke lifts Eagles up where they belong

New Woodville West Torrens Football Club leadership mentor Luke Powell and coach Michael Godden. Photo: Calum Robertson. Source: News Limited

FOR many of his 232 games for Woodville-West Torrens and particularly in his final two years as captain, Luke Powell was the heartbeat of the footy club.

"And in lots of ways he still is," Eagles coach Michael Godden said. "We don't really feel like we've lost him."

He still turns up to Woodville Oval every week to run the club's leadership program and interviewed about 20 candidates for his replacement as skipper before it was put to a player vote.

Powell retired last year battered and bruised after giving every last drop of effort, but he could have bowed out like that years ago.

But worried about a mass exodus of experience, which happened in part, Powell stayed on to make sure the next generation had strong leadership just like he had with Gavin Colville and Mark McKenzie around him.

"He wanted to make sure he was here to start that process," Godden said. "Luke always played for others, never for himself, and last year he took a lot of load for us emotionally and physically."

He has also arranged a mentor program which brings some of the club's biggest names back to Woodville to guide the leadership group.

Powell wasn't the only club stalwart to retire last year. Key forward Adam Grocke also called it quits and together they left with 398 games and four premierships between them.

Godden describes the pair as "tremendous warriors" but said there came a point where you had to look beyond them.

"You can't hang on to the ones who have done it in the past because there is a certain point where they can't do it any more," he said.

"And the exciting side to that is what we've got in the room now - they can forge their own path and be the next Adam Grocke and Luke Powell and Mark McKenzie."

That is the challenge Godden is facing heading into the final year of his contract in which he's put a top-three regular season finish as a pass mark on his head.

Four years since he led the Eagles to the 2011 premiership, they've far from bottomed out but haven't progressed past the second week of the finals. In 2012 they suffered a premiership hangover, started the season 2-6 and limped into September only to be bundled out in the elimination final.

In 2013 they finished second on the ladder but coughed up big leads in two finals and went out in straight sets.

In 2014 they made a 4-1 start and looked a million dollars early but faltered and lost the elimination final.

"I certainly felt last year we would have finished in the top three and we didn't, so that's underachieving," Godden said.

But as much as he sees it as underachieving, he also sees progress.

"We've kept this group together and the majority of these blokes are going into their third year," Godden said.

"We're starting to build something we think can take us for seven years, and that started in 2013." The reason Godden says it started in 2013 and not 2010 when he took over or 2011 when they won the flag is because he inherited a "very mature football side".

"By 2011 half of our side had been through the SANFL rigours for a number of years," he said. "We're talking about the match-hardened guys like Rimington, Treeby, Parry, Cicolella, McKenzie, Grieger, Tiller, all players we would argue were in the last period of their football lives.

"In 2012 we tried to hang on one more year with a similar group and it just didn't work, and by 2013 we'd lost the majority of them and that was the start of the re-build for us."

The focus shifted to bolstering its junior teams and reserves side which has just won back-to-back premierships and players are now filtering into the league team.

"I thought our best last year was good enough to challenge but our deficiency was our mental strength and ability to play all day," he said.

"We still had guys that just hadn't played enough footy in crunch moments to pursue the highest level."

Luke Jarrad is the only player on the list over the age of 30 compared to the premiership year of 2011 when there were five. "You can imagine held together, when those 28 year olds are 32 and the 24s are 28, and there's 12 of them, where this club could be," Godden said.

Going into the 2015 season, Godden had three things on his recruiting wishlist.

He needed a key defender to stop the side leaking big scores, a big-bodied ruckman to help Marc Borholm and more inside midfielders to win contested footy.

The Eagles have recruited 200cm ruckman Fraser Thurlow from Essendon, got Nick Hayes, Luke Thompson and Jared Petrenko back to the club along with Angus Rowntree from a knee injury and signed Aseri Raikiwasa from Port Adelaide.

"We underachieved in 2014 and we have been away from the top for too long but we certainly feel we are now in a position to challenge again," Godden said.

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