Island’s champion considers his future after 2022

ARGUABLY, Beau Vernon will finish his term as coach of the Phillip Island Football Netball Club as the club’s greatest coach of all time, certainly one of them.

Appointed at the end of the 2017 season, after taking Leongatha to a drought-breaking first premiership in 16 years, by a heart-stopping one point over the club’s arch nemesis Maffra, Vernon put together a dream team in 2018 at Phillip Island that swept the competition.

They finished the year defeating Koo Wee Rup by a record 99 points in the grand final, allowing the hapless Redlegs just three points on the day, while kicking 14.18.102.

But it was the homecoming for Vernon that everyone in football wanted to see.

It was harder the next year, in 2019 against Cora-Lynn, but Phillip Island still finished the year as the best team, winning the grand final by four points 9.11.65 to Cora-Lynn’s 9.7.61.

Phillip Island Football Netball Club President Chris Ross allows himself the indulgence, when talking about Beau’s impact on the club since returning to where it all began, that he could have won three, even four premierships on the trot.

It’s a reasonable argument.

Phillip Island was still the benchmark team when the 2020 season was cancelled, at the height of the Coronavirus outbreak, and they were still on top of the ladder, in 2021, when the season had to be abandoned, agonizingly close to the start of the finals, early in September that year.

Could they have won four? They’d certainly have been in the fight.

Phillip Island was named ‘minor premiers’ last year, a title that should not dismissed for all the effort and preparation that goes into a club at all levels. And getting a senior team to finish the home and away season on top is a genuine achievement, especially when there are no finals.

But they weren’t on their own.

Hill End in the Mid Gippsland FNL finished top in 2021 and looked set to breakthrough for their first flag in more than 40 years after being runners-up in 2019.

The Woodside Wildcats were another team robbed of the chance in 2021 and there were dozens of other hard-luck stories all over country Victoria.

But four premierships in four years, that would have taken some beating, according to Chris Scott, who places a lot of the credit at the feet of Beau Vernon.

“What he has done for this club is just incredible, and I’m not just talking about winning, in fact, I’m specifically not taking about winning. It’s all the other things as well.

“He’s been a big part of setting the culture and everyone has bought into it.

“The Mental Health Round was taken on by the whole club, including the juniors as well. The disability round and all the other things.”

Ross was speaking briefly about what Beau Vernon has achieved at the club in the wake of a low-key announcement during the week, that he would not be continuing on as senior coach next year.

It has been a possibility know about inside the four walls for a while.

“Look, I don’t mind people knowing about it,” said Beau in a text message during the week.

“But I won’t be saying much about it until the end of the season,” he said.

There’s still a job to be done. After the Island’s big win over Cora-Lynn on Saturday, they’re sitting equal second, and you never know, even with Tooradin-Dalmore being such a runaway favourite this year.

Chris Ross is in sync.

“We’ll have a lot more to say about it at the end of the season when Beau will get all the thanks and praise he thoroughly deserves, but right now, he’s just wanting to get on with it

What’s next for Phillip Island’s Beau Vernon? It should make interesting reading whatever it is.