Joe Galati, Oliver Griffin, Max Worsnop, Curtis Howe, Addison Nolan

St Bedes Mentone/Tigers AFC is pleased to announce the appointment of Joe Galati to the key position of Director of Coaching (Juniors) for the 2021 season.

“To have someone of Joe’s professional and sporting calibre join our leadership group is a key part of our future strategic planning” said SBMT Club President Lou Prichard Nicholson.

“Joe is a natural leader who understands the big picture and how to best to manage, align and develop stakeholder relations. Joe has been an active member at SBMT for the past six years having coached for a number of years, most recently at Under 12 Division 1 level. He is a current development coach for the St Kilda Football Club’s Next Generation Academy and was a premiership Seniors Assistant Coach in 2018 in the SFNL with the Highett Football Club,” said Prichard Nicholson.

“I am excited by the opportunity to work more closely with our community coaches to help them develop their own interpersonal and technical football skills as a driver to enhance the overall learning environment for our junior players.” said Galati

“I have been so fortunate to have many quality football mentors guiding me over the past few years and I still remember one of those mentors, Stephen Walton at the Saints NGA, passionately telling an audience of excited parents whose sons and daughters were joining the academy, that ‘if your get the development piece right, the results will look after themselves’. It’s a core philosophy that has stuck with me since that day and inspires the improvement mindset that I believe needs to reside within the DNA of all our community coaches.”

“Community junior coaches should not be measured by their game day win/loss ratio, but their ability to provide a safe learning environment for junior players to grow and develop, often at their own pace, in both a personal and footy skills technical sense. This development piece needs to be at the heart of the coaching curriculum and needs to be measured” said Galati.

“It is a privilege to be a custodian of junior talent and we all need to work together within the AFL system to ensure that we are setting the kids up to be the best version of themselves into the future.”