With the 2026 season just around the corner, we are excited to announce our 2026 SANFLW and U18 Girls coaching staff, who will lead our players\u2019 development and drive the program towards success.<\/p>\n
Shane Pill takes the lead in his first season as SANFLW Head Coach. Shane brings years of coaching experience, having coached at West Adelaide zoned club Goodwood Saints, where he guided the club\u2019s rise to Division 1 over the past four to five years. He was also part of West Adelaide\u2019s coaching staff during the Senior Men\u2019s 2015 Premiership. Shane will introduce a new game plan, a fresh style of play and a different approach to training that will provide a welcome boost for our playing group.<\/p>\n
Joining Shane\u2019s coaching staff this year is long-time assistant coach Damien Venning, who will oversee the midfield. DV has played a key role in the growth and development of our women\u2019s program, having coached in the SANFLW side for the past four years, as well as leading our U17 Girls over the same period. His knowledge and leadership have earned the respect of the playing group, and he will continue to drive our midfield forward.<\/p>\n
Phillip Marks will take on a new role in his third year as an assistant coach, moving into charge of the forward group. After spending the past two seasons developing a strong defensive unit, Phil will now be tasked with turning that focus into scoring power in 2026.<\/p>\n
We are also incredibly excited to welcome former Port Adelaide AFLW captain Janelle Cuthbertson to our coaching group. Janelle will lead our defensive unit, bringing elite-level leadership and defensive expertise to an already experienced backline. We warmly welcome Janelle to the West Adelaide Football Club.<\/p>\n
With the U18 Girls season fast approaching, we are proud to announce Ray Billing as our inaugural U18 Girls Head Coach for 2026. Ray\u2019s passion for developing junior footballers will place our program in great stead.<\/p>\n
We also welcome Sarah Niemann to West Adelaide. Sarah brings extensive coaching experience from Happy Valley, where she worked across both junior boys and girls programs. She will take charge of the midfield and has already been a valuable addition to the program.<\/p>\n
Our forward line will be led by Dan Smith, who is well known within our junior pathways. Dan has spent the past few seasons coaching our Development League forwards, as well as our U15 Girls program.<\/p>\n
Taking charge of the defence for our U18 Girls is Nicola Biagi. An experienced West Adelaide League footballer Nicola brings strong standards, professionalism and leadership to our junior program.<\/p>\n
Support Staff<\/p>\n
Bench Coach \u2013 Kym Bloffwitch
Development Coach \u2013 Meg Chaplin
High Performance Manager \u2013 Joel Dunstan
Head Trainer \u2013 Rhiannon Cooper
Trainer \u2013 Sophie Champion
Trainer \u2013 Emily Pugh
Player Welfare Officer \u2013 Kate Rasheed
Physiotherapist \u2013 Alex Morgan
Physiotherapist \u2013 Ollie Cheesman
Doctor \u2013 Meg Deakin<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the 2026 season just around the corner, we are excited to announce our 2026 SANFLW and U18…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":486123,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-486122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=486122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486122\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/486123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}