Evergreen Woods not ready to give footy away

Evergreen footballer Dionne Woods believes keeping fit and a passion for playing the game he loves are the reasons behind him winning the Sean Plaisted award as the Great Southern Football League’s leading goal kicker.

Woods, who lives in Tambellup, has been a stalwart of country football around the Great Southern region, playing for his home town before stints with Borden, Kojonup and Denmark-Walpole and then finding his way to Mt Barker.

The 39-year-old has been superb since joining the Bulls and after booting 42 goals in the regular season, won the Sean Plaisted trophy.

His tally included a 10-goal haul against Albany and a six-goal effort opposed to Denmark-Walpole.

“It’s a privilege to be in the forward line,” Woods said. “All my career, I’ve been in the back line but I had been trying to sneak down into the forward line and after kicking a few goals, (Brad Hook) gave me that opportunity.

“I like to save my energy, so I don’t go chasing the young blokes up the ground. I love (footy); I’ll definitely go around again next year. I play basketball in the off-season, go for a run all the time and being a Christian for 17 years, I don’t drink or smoke, so I look after my body.”

Bulls coach Hook accepted Woods’ award at Thursday night’s Kleemann Medal presentations and paid credit to his veteran.

“To all you young blokes out there, you should be ashamed of yourself for letting a 39-year-old win the goal kicking,” Hook joked.

Magpies star Tyler Stone won his first coaches’ player-of-the-year award to cap a superb season.

Stone took the lead in round 13 and prevailed by five votes with a tally of 69 votes to edge out Kleemann medallist Logan Stubber (64) and Railways’ Craig Frost (54).

The Charlie Punch Medal for the reserves best and fairest player was won by Tigers’ Jarrad Norton.

Norton was judged best-on-ground only once but he was consistent across the 15 rounds, finishing with 14 votes to defeat Royals’ Brandon Woods (12).

Some of the other awards announced were Albany Football Club’s Tracy Blaszkow as volunteer of the year for her tireless dedication, Ryan Tindale winning umpire of the year, Kane Shephard with the GSFL fairest and best at the Landmark Country Football Championships and Darrell Panizza with his GSFL life membership.