You'd be sorely mistaken if you thought Mick Schmiedel didn't have rugby league on his mind.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Just a week after being re-appointed as Gunnedah Bulldogs coach for 2022, the veteran mentor said his mind is well and truly on the job.
"Most of the people that know me, and know my love of rugby league, would know that I'm 100 per cent in, 100 mile an hour, right now," Schmiedel said.
He's been reaching out to players to gauge interest for 2022 and has early pre-season plans set in place already.
The plan is to start November, take a break toward the end of December before they get stuck into it again at a training camp at Lake Keepit at the end of January.
"The club's on board but these things [camps] do cost money," Schmiedel said.
"At this stage I'm fairly keen to make it work. [We want to] become a bit more of a family rather than a team of mates."
Schmiedel isn't just looking forward, though.
He's had time to look back on an, at times, frustrating season which saw the Bulldogs finish fifth and miss out on finals which are currently on hold due to lockdown.
The Bulldogs lost six games by six points or less and Schmiedel said they led at half-time in nine games.
In particular, a string of losses through the middle of the year had Schmiedel feeling "bewildered" at the time but on reflection he said: "It probably hasn't been a bad year for us in regards to the amount of kids we brought up into first grade and debuted.
"There was six or seven of them in total that were under 20-odd that debuted this year.
"And a lot of them played most of the year in first grade to get that experience they'll hopefully take into next year."
On bringing experience into his team, Schmiedel said: "There's a couple of guys I wouldn't mind talking to but I think we've got the cattle to have a successful year next year on the grounds that those kids would have gained a lot of experience out of this year."
Ben Jaffrey
Ben is a content curator and journalist for The Land. He has been with ACM since 2015 and first worked at The Area News and then at the Northern Daily Leader. Ben first joined ACM Agri as a digital journalist for all seven agricultural mastheads in 2022 before shifting to The Land full-time in 2023.
Ben is a content curator and journalist for The Land. He has been with ACM since 2015 and first worked at The Area News and then at the Northern Daily Leader. Ben first joined ACM Agri as a digital journalist for all seven agricultural mastheads in 2022 before shifting to The Land full-time in 2023.
