Along with the likes of South Melbourne and Box Hill United, Ashburton Women’s Soccer Club has been synonymous with the WPL over the years, but success has not always followed the big club from the eastern suburbs.
Last season’s eighth place finish was the club’s lowest in the last decade, and without a finals appearance since 2010, change was badly needed. With the 2014 season being the last one in its current guise before the implementation of the National Premier League in Victoria for women, the club decided to take action to ensure they finish their WPL journey on a high.
In finding a new way forward, Ariel Reigosa’s services were not retained and the club appointed former Ballarat Red Devils coach Sinisa Cohadzic.
He comes with high credentials, currently holding a UEFA/AFC A Licence and a FFA Football Conditioning Licence, making him the most qualified coach in the WPL. His appointment is a big coup for Ashburton and the league as a whole, and while some may question why Cohadzic chose to further his coaching career in the women’s game, he is in no doubt that this was the best move for him personally.
“I want to coach at a high level and opportunities in Victoria are really limited so I had to find a club that is something in my range where I can push and educate myself even more and get those badges and all those kind of things. But the most important thing is to coach at a high level,” Cohadzic said.
“I had the opportunity to stay in Ballarat but the thing is with Ballarat regarding the NPL you don’t know if they get it, they don’t get it and for me to wait until February, could be late for me to find a decent club for me to coach. I was looking for something at a high level and [women’s soccer] is going to be challenging.
“It’s something different but I love to challenge myself, so these people from Ashburton were serious about it and when we talked about me coming to the club everything was positive. I got offered everything that I wanted, playing wise, facility wise, equipment wise, so it was something that I took to take up on a big challenge for myself. I want to implement my method of training sessions and I want to see how it works with girls really so it’s something that I’m really looking forward to.”
Training is already underway at the club, and Cohadzic has wasted no time in implementing his philosophy on the club. The task will not be easy however, considering the club’s disciplined, counter attacking approach from last season is largely at contrast to his high pressing, possession based playing style. Despite the difficulty in making such big changes, Cohadzic is positive that the players will be able to successfully execute his style of playing through some time.
“I’m a possession based type of coach and the tempo of my game will be very high and I will require from girls to be very disciplined and to work very hard, which I’ve called the girls from day one in our first meeting so they know what they have to expect. Yes we will play possession style of play but at the same time we will work hard to win the ball as soon as possible which will help us keep possession more than any other team,” he said.
“I can see that the girls are disciplined and are willing to work and it will take us probably two, three months to get it right and obviously they need to adapt to my style. At the same time I said to them for us to succeed we need to all jump on the same bus. As I say, my philosophy as a coach, everyone needs to believe in it so we can have success. Having them play last year that counter attacking style it’s going to be totally the opposite this year so we want to be attacking, we want to keep possession and we want to be pressing so it’s going to be totally opposite from last year. If I get the discipline right and the girls working hard it should be good.”
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It’s not hard to find the origins of the discipline that Cohadzic craves from his teams. In his playing days he was a midfield general, a role that requires an abundance of concentration and determination. As a player he showed that he had the aptitude for coaching as he was the team organiser, ensuring all his teammates were doing their job.
“I was more of a player where I would be more of an organiser and a player that other players could rely on me to give a lending hand to everyone. That’s why I got into this coaching. This is where it brought me. It’s nearly the same philosophy of it,” he said.
“I went through that experience as a professional player and that’s something that I can bring to all these players and get in them the mentality that they need to be responsible and if they want to succeed they need to be disciplined.
“So this is why I [said] what I said to my girls in the first meeting. I’m here to do a job and I want from you to be disciplined. I know there’s a lot of certain rules that I’ve brought in now that girls are going to be terrified but this is something for us to succeed we need to do it. So I brought in some kind of player professionalism at Ashburton this year which I’m hoping that the girls will pick up on it and obviously do the right thing.”
Cohadzic’s playing career began at Heidelberg United, and following a successful spell as a youth player, he moved to the Serbian Super League to play for Radnički Niš. He had a happy four years at the club and then moved to Poland to play for Widzew Łódź, where he thought his career was going to take another step forward.
Unfortunately, the way football goes Widzew Łódź sacked the manager that brought him to the club and his career started travelling on a downward trend. It was a tough time for Cohadzic, who had plenty to deal with at that point not just in his footballing career, but his personal life.
“I had a one-year contract [at Widzew Łódź] but I only stayed for six months because the coach that brought me got sacked and you know how it is these days in soccer when you don’t have that coach that brought you it’s hard to start,” he said.
“But then after that I decided to come back to Australia and I had a couple of trials in the NSL but actually I was supposed to go to Canberra with Rale Rasic but my dad died so I had to go back and then I lost about six months of my career and then when I came back I went to Springvale White Eagles in VPL and then Preston VPL, so I played a couple of years in Premier League here and then slowly I was going down and down, year by year I would go a league down. As you slow down you go a league down.
“It was [hard to take] because as a soccer player you want to be always playing at a higher level and I went [to Widzew Łódź] with high expectations and at the end of the day I didn’t continue it so instead of making another step up, I probably went down [when I] came to Australia. No disrespect towards Australia but when you come from a European league and come down to Australia, where in Australian soccer wasn’t that high level at that point in time, then it’s a little bit of a disappointment.
“But I love this game so much that I’m hoping to transfer that disappointment into now something good in my coaching career. I’m really hoping that my coaching career can take me a long way because I’m very dedicated and I study the game all the time.”
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Looking back to the start of Cohadzic’s playing career at Heidelberg United and the teammates he had around him, there was a strong hint that he would eventually become a coach.
His teammates included Michael Curcija, Danny Gnjidic and Eric Vassiliadis who currently hold senior head coach positions at Essendon Royals, Moreland Zebras and Port Melbourne Sharks respectively while Leigh Tsoumerkas is Vassiliadis’ assistant at Port Melbourne.
Cohadzic is certainly in good company and brings quite the profile to Ashburton which has only aided his attempts to recruit players who will improve the club. He also admits to having little knowledge of the league itself but doesn’t feel that it’s necessarily a disadvantage given he gets to see everyone on a clean slate.
“At the moment I haven’t seen all the girls but the ones that I’ve seen that have played senior level last year I think they will do well for me and I can see that the girls are disciplined and are willing to work and it will take us probably two, three months to get it right and obviously they need to adapt to my style,” he said.
“It will work in my favour to get some girls across just because of the level of coaching I’m going to present to them and I’m hoping that I get good quality even if they’re younger players that I have, about two, three fifteen-sixteen year-olds. I’m willing to take them too and give them a chance because those are the girls that need to improve and those are the girls that will improve.”
The standard of coaching which Cohadzic will bring to the WPL is in his view an advantage for Ashburton, given that he doesn’t see much of a technical difference between players from every club.
There is of course an example set from the 2013 season, when Riccardo Marchioli managed to turn cellar dwellers Altona City around into a much more competitive outfit in the second half of the season.
“[Marchioli’s] a young up and coming coach and he went through that accreditation and that education which put him in a stead to have his own philosophy and play with the girls the way he wants to play and that’s why I say the game will improve with coaches like that. He needed a little bit of time but obviously as he went along he got success so that’s why I say we need to believe in what we’re doing and just try. Because these girls are very disciplined and they can do it,” Cohadzic said.
“There’s not a big difference because we got to be honest, technically everyone will be on the same bar. There’s not a big difference in women’s soccer. It’s all about disciplined wise; can we, as in myself and the other coaches, they have their own philosophy and if we can get them right, doing the right things and if in that small frame of time get the girls doing that then you obviously will have success.
“The way I’m disciplined towards the game, the way I have my method of training sessions and I come 90 minutes before any girls at the training sessions. I’m 90 minutes before the start of the training session there and I’ll leave last. So I’m very dedicated towards this game and giving the girls the best education and the best possibility to learn.”
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With Ashburton craving that return to happier days, Cohadzic has set a minimum target of making the finals at this point in time. In order to match his ambition for the club however, he acknowledges that he will need to strengthen the squad with a couple more players.
“We’re just looking at getting Ashburton back to the days where they were finishing in the top five. So these people in this club are working really hard and they really want to be back in that top five of the competition where they think they belong. And if we can strengthen two or three positions then I think that we can get there,” he said.
Should they make it into the finals come September, Cohadzic will no doubt focus his attentions on going as far as possible, as he certainly has the ambition and drive to take the club to new heights.
From a more personal standpoint, make no mistake about it, Cohadzic does not see this as just a job to keep himself busy. His greater ambition is to coach at as high a level as he possibly can, be it in the men’s or women’s game, locally or internationally, and he views this job as just another step forward in his own development as a coach.
“Is it the men’s game, is it the women’s game, I’m very much interested to be in a professional club. Myself as a professional player I’m used to being professional and disciplined about everything I do, same as coaching. As I say the example that I come early, that I set up the whole ground for girls just to come and go at the end of the day it’s something that not many coaches are doing,” he said.
“There are some coaches doing it but us new crop of coaches that are up and coming, they’re probably much more organised then the older style of coaches. No disrespect to the older coaches but how we are brought up through this system is just giving us a different level and ideas to put in front of the players, and new methods of training.
“Like I am implementing now new football conditioning which I’ve never done with the girls and this is what’s going to be the interesting part. How the girls are going to react to it. But is it W-League, is it A-League, is it overseas, for me it doesn’t bother me. As long as it’s a professional environment and I have everything that I need to make a successful team.”
The confidence which he has, speaking about his ambitions is a sign of a coach on the path to success, and Ashburton have done well for themselves. Time will tell if the appointment will work out for the better, but so far, this has the promise to be the club’s best season in recent times.