THE KANGAROOS have secured an affiliate deal with VFL club Werribee for the next two seasons following the decision of their former partner, the Tasmanian Devils, to go it alone next year.
Werribee, which had been aligned with the Western Bulldogs until the end of the 2007 season, will join North Ballarat as the club's partial VFL affiliate.
I think it's a good thing for Werribee," the Roos' general manager of football, Donald McDonald, said on Monday.
The Kangaroos are a great club and I know our players will be really respectful of them (Werribee) and go there and perform their best. We've got a good culture here and I reckon it's going to be a win-win situation.
Werribee had parted company with the Western Bulldogs, so that meant they were a stand-alone club without a partner and we just felt that it was a fantastic opportunity for our footy club to get connected with a really well-respected VFL club.
It's really well run and coached and they've got a great culture down there and we thought it would be a great match for us."
The announcement comes after months of negotiations between the Roos and Werribee, which had initially expressed a desire to remain a stand-alone club in the VFL after the Bulldogs re-aligned themselves with former Collingwood affiliate Williamstown.
The Tasmanian club had been popular with Roos players, but despite the period of uncertainty that followed the Devils' decision to part company with the Roos, McDonald was happy with the final outcome.
"I think our guys had to travel 13 times last season with Tassie, so that number of interstate trips makes it a pretty big workload and they were all [mostly] our younger players as well," he said.
"It was a tremendous experience for them and Tassie are a good club, but the good thing about this is that a lot of our guys are on that side of town and they just have to pop on the freeway and get down to Werribee.
"The players are happy, I think they're just more relieved that we've got another club now. It's taken a while, but they're a really good, strong group of players and they have full confidence in whatever we try and do for them."
McDonald said there had been "no bad blood" between the Kangaroos and the Devils with the break-up a "mutual agreement". Werribee will be the club's fourth VFL partner since 2005, when Port Melbourne decided to go it alone, leading to the partial alignment deal between North Ballarat and the Devils.
"It's just how it's panned out," McDonald said, adding the partial partnership model had many benefits.
"There are difficulties with the full alignment and we experienced that with Port Melbourne which is a very strong club in its own right, but it just didn't work.
"We've found with the partial alignments it actually alleviates the pressure on both parties and you don't get as much conflict over selection and I think generally that's the root of all the problems.
"I see Collingwood have gone out on its own and the AFL clubs want to have sole control over the development of their players, and that's fair enough, but we've found that the partial alignments haven't hindered the progress of our young blokes.
"So it works both ways and we found that North Ballarat really loved the partial alignment and I think that Werribee will as well."
Former Bulldogs' player Simon Atkins is the senior coach at Werribee and McDonald expressed his complete confidence in the well-credentialled coach as he enters his fourth year in charge.
"He's very experienced and we're very happy to have him coaching our boys," he said.
A "mini draft" will be conducted to determine which players are assigned to each club when the Roos' playing list is finalised following the conclusion of the pre-season draft
Last Modified on 18/03/2008 00:40