After a torrid season in 2018, Orange City are hoping to turn their fortunes around with a coaching and structural overhaul to focus the direction of sides across all grades.
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The Lions have announced former player Viv Paasi as the club’s first-grade coach for season 2019, with the former junior and first grader moving back to Orange after over a decade in Newcastle with the Wanderers.
Paasi guided the Wanderers to three grand finals in past three years but wasn’t able to taste premiership success.
He played all of his junior football at City, sneaking in one year of first grade before moving to Sydney and then to Newcastle.
The name Paasi is a well-known one at the Lions, with John Paasi a member of the side that won six flags on the trot towards the end of the 1980s and the start of the 1990s.
Lions president Steve Stone said he wasn’t expecting Paasi the yonger to usher in an era like the one his father played in, but was hoping his appointment would help guide the club through an off-field restructure after winning just one game this year.
Stone – who coached Paasi as a junior – is hoping the new coach would bring some much-needed “new ideas” into the role, which has been filled by Steve Hamson since 2010.
“Gosh yes, Steve would be the first to admit that [change was needed],” Stone said.
Hamson – who Stone said was looking to lighten his workload next year – will step back from the sidelines and take on a role as director of coaching in 2019, helping bring all grades in line with each other’s structure.
Stone said Paasi would bring “a new structure” to the way the Lions played on the field, but it was Paasi, Hamson and a few others changing the club off the field – such as retaining more younger players – which Stone was excited about for next season.
“We need to be more across the grades so we’re all working the same way towards the same goal,” he said.
“It will be a challenge … there are tough games every week so we’ll be going in as underdogs.”
The Lions’ pre-season will begin in January.
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