'Build around them': Power looking to capitalise on youth success in 2024

The club's senior outfit, fresh off a preliminary finals appearance, has under gone a changing of the guard with some of their more experienced players departing.

At this stage, the side will be without Joel Moloney (Port Fairy), Ben Moloney (retired), Nick Bourke (Ocean Grove), Paddy Baker (Camperdown), Scott Judd (Caramut), Lucas Boyd (Thomson) and Ryan O'Connor (Terang Mortlake) in 2024.

The club has however recruited Louis Cahill and Jake Evans (both Cobden), as well as former Power players Brad Lucas and Aaron Robertson, who both return from a hiatus from football.

Fortunately, the Power's youth stocks are strong after consecutive under 18 flags, with a number of this year's premiership players featuring regularly for the senior team.

"They were already in and out of the team while they were playing under 18s and winning the premiership and whereas now they will probably be more solidified in the senior side next year," Uwland told The Standard.

"Our aim is to build around them because they've had some pretty good success and work well together. If we can help them to go as hard as possible and as good as possible then the team should benefit from it."

Uwland, who will coach in tandem with Justin Wallace this year after Nick Bourke's departure, noted the list wasn't finalised yet but was happy with how it was shaping up.

"We'll be fairly young but they're a pretty good, fast, fit group so we expect it to stay similar to that and a few older heads to steer the ship," he said.

The club began pre-season training last week with 30 players on track for the first session.

Uwland confirmed finals was still the side's first aim for next year's campaign.

"We think we've definitely got a pretty good chance of making finals," he said.

"The last two years we made the prelims so that's the bar that we want to set. That's always a tough challenge to continue to make preliminary finals but we want to first try and make finals and obviously then push through to the grand final.

"Baby steps for now, we're just focusing on at training, setting up structures for next year and trying to focus that around the younger group we've got."