West joins Demons
21/11/2008 1:03 PM
Former Western Bulldogs champion Scott West will take a part-time coaching role with Melbourne, the Demons confirmed on Friday.
West will coach the Demons' midfield and spend match day in the coaches' box as he starts his coaching career after drawing the curtain on a stellar 324-game career with the Bulldogs earlier this year.
Impressed by the potential of the club's young list, West made the move to the Demons after being approached by coach Dean Bailey.
Highly regarded by former mentor Rodney Eade for his astute football mind, West, who spent his entire career at Whitten Oval, decided he needed to move to a new club in order to broaden his knowledge.
"It's a simple game but clubs do it differently," West said at the Demons' new training ground at Casey Fields in Melbourne's outer south-east. "To get an experience at another club I think is really going to benefit me down the track."
Bailey has already challenged his young list to sponge as much information from West.
"(I) challenged the list today to not only get to know him but learn from him and take every piece of knowledge that he's got, everything that he has, get into his head and extract it because he's going to help you as a player," he said.
Bailey said the Demons, last season's wooden-spooners, were ahead of where they were at this stage of last year's pre-season but stressed 'the games will really determine where we're at'.