Season Preview 2024: West Belconnen Warriors
The West Belconnen Warriors are set to "start off on the front foot" in the Canberra Raiders Cup First Grade, aiming to set the tone early after falling short of their expectations last year.
While the Katrina Fanning Shield side look to go back-to-back after a fairytale inaugural season in 2023, and the League Tag side are determined to play finals footy after just missing out last year.
Following a premiership winning season in 2022, Warriors first grade player Tom Bethke reflected on the challenges they faced at the start of last year, and touched on their goals for the new season.
“We had a little bit of premiership hangover from last year, we missed the jump early and had to crawl our way back in the end, so we’re hoping to start off on the front foot this year," Bethke said.
“We’d love to go all the way, a couple of years ago it was awesome so if we could get there again that’d be great”.
West Belconnen's inaugural KFS side in 2023 amazingly won the premiership. With new faces arriving during the preseason, Warriors player Crystal Papalii talked about the teams main focus and goals for the year.
“We actually have a couple new girls coming from touch and tag, so our main focus this year is a lot of defence," said Papalii.
“Main goal for 2024 is to hopefully go back-to-back with me leading again”.
West Belconnen League Tagger Ashleigh Hibbert wants to build on last year to hopefully play in the finals series after narrowly missing out in 2023.
“We’ve had a lot of the girls from last year return, which is really great to help us keep building on where we finished last year, as well as some new girls that have come to the club this year which will be really good assets for us to have," Hibbert said.
“We’d like to see that top four finish by the end of the season and get back to where have we been in previous years”.
The West Belconnen Warriors come up against the Woden Valley Rams at Phillip Oval in round one of the Canberra Raiders Cup and Katrina Fanning Shield.
