The men’s National Flag Football Team, the NZ Mako, has confirmed their appointment of the Core Coaches Group for the 2022 to 2024 campaign, culminating with the IFAF Flag Football World Championships to be held in Finland in 2024.
Earlier this year the NZAFF Board reconfirmed the head coach and manager roles with Shiraz Soysa and Brendan Mcgurk respectively. These appointments were made for the last campaign that was subsequently affected by the Covid-19 worldwide pandemic.
The selection panel interviewed 7 applicants for the core assistant coach roles and commented that it was great to see that there was such good interest in the role.
We are excited to announce the following appointments, to join Shiraz in the Mako Core Coaches Group:
Assistant coach (Player Development and QBs) - Bradley Fraser.
Assistant coach (Offense) - Chris Cordrey
Assistant coach (Defense)- Shane Tinetti
Bradley, from American Football Canterbury, has a strong depth of football knowledge and will be focusing on the individual development of the players within the Mako Programme from the HPU through to competition teams.
Chris is new to the NZ football scene, however he brings a much needed external perspective into the Mako Programme, through his 17 years’ of experience in Canada (mostly in non-contact forms of the game).
Shane, from the Nelson club, is one of our premier defensive specialist coaches and brings experience of the last Mako campaign to the World Championships held in Miami in 2016.
Coach Soysa is very excited about the complementary skills and experience that this group will bring to the campaign. Further to the appointments a number of regional coaches will be appointed to assist the core coaching group in developing players at a local level. We will have a further announcement on this group of regional coaches soon.
The Board commented that the structure that Coach Soysa is putting in place will serve Flag Football through this campaign into the subsequent campaigns that will lead to the 2028 World championships which we hope, with the backing of the NFL, will be at the LA Olympics.
The next step for the Coaching team is to set out the timetable for the rest of the year so that the players who registered interest in being part of the campaign know when the qualifying event will be held.
The campaign for 2024 will also include a women’s team and the process of finding a women’s coach is now underway.
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