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Sport

11 September, 2023

Damian Cupido to lead Maryborough Giants senior footballers in 2024 debut

The Maryborough Giants have made their first big statement that they won’t be mucking around in the Maryborough Castlemaine District Football Netball League following the Royal Park and Maryborough Rovers amalgmation, appointing Damian Cupido as...

By Michael Thompson

Damian Cupido to lead Maryborough Giants senior footballers in 2024 debut - feature photo

The Maryborough Giants have made their first big statement that they won’t be mucking around in the Maryborough Castlemaine District Football Netball League following the Royal Park and Maryborough Rovers amalgmation, appointing Damian Cupido as their first senior football coach.

Cupido has an extensive and unique history in football, having arrived in Australia at a young age from South Africa, before he was taken with pick six in the 1999 draft by the Brisbane Lions.

Cupido would later play 13 games for the Lions under Leigh Matthews, but missed out on playing in their 2001 and 2002 premierships, before moving to Essendon in 2003, where he would play another 40 games, including kicking 39 goals in the 2003 season.

After being delisted by Essendon following the 2005 season, Cupido played in the SANFL with South Adelaide and West Adelaide, playing across four seasons.

Since 2010, Cupido has played for multiple clubs across the country, which has included the likes of North Albury, home club Croydon, Mt Evelyn, Ouyen, Bacchus Marsh, Henty, Rumbalara, Girgarre and Murrabit.

Cupido will be serving as playing-coach, while he has thrilled local crowds in recent years, which saw him kick 105 goals for Girgarre in 2022, and 52 goals for a Murrabit team which finished bottom of the ladder in the Golden Rivers Football League this year.

However, with Cupido moving to Bendigo at the start of the year, the Maryborough Giants job was too tempting to turn down.

“I’d just moved to Bendigo at the start of the year, and I thought it’d be a good opportunity to get back into a senior coaching job. I had coached last year, but then stepped down at the start of the year, and played at Murrabit as a player. But my passion is to coach,” he said.

“With the merger coming together and the Maryborough Giants being formed, I thought it was great to get back into it and hopefully bring it some early success.”

Cupido says that being able to play at the elite level meant that he felt he had to give back at a local level.

“To me, football is something that’s been my life. I love the game, and I’ve been fortunate to be in some of the positions I’ve been in,” he said.

“To be able to give back, and pass on things that I’ve learned to younger players to make their football better, it’s the job of everyone who has played at the elite level.

“Not everyone makes it, and a lot of people don’t have the time to do it, but to me, it’s a passion, and I enjoy developing young players and see them grow and have success, and it is something I want to do here as well.”

Cupido says he intends to go into the job with his full commitment, saying it’s a personal policy to bring success to his club — something he has done in spades in the past.

“As soon as I commit to something, I go full steam towards it,” he said.

“When I coached Rumbalara in 2014, I was able to take them from the bottom to the premiership, and the Girgarre job in 2019, they went to the finals for the first time in 21 years.

“The method of my madness works when the guys buy in, and that’s what I want to do early on with the group.

“I want to make it one club from the very start, it’s the first time I’ve coached a merger. It won’t be sunshine and lollipops straight away, but I want to build a culture and a reputation nice and early internally, which will flow onto the ground.

“There’s no other way to attack it, you have to be motivated. If you’re not structured to do it, it’s a waste of time.

“I’ve come in to plan and I want to make a difference, get everyone on board nice and early.

“I’ll look to iron the kinks out where I can and build the foundation, and we’ll see where it takes us.”

That included a trip to understand what the Giants were all about on Friday, when accepting the job.

“I came to Maryborough on Friday with my partner, and met everyone within the committee. We had a really good chat and we feel we are on the same page,” he said.

"We’re excited and keen to start this new venture. It will be a lot of hard work, and in terms of the playing group, we need to establish a strong culture early on, and I outlined that early on, on and off the field, just to have strong conversations on a daily basis through our actions and behaviours.

“When any club brings in a new senior coach, you want to make sure they have good, positive energy, and directing it into the right place.

“That’s what I want to do, just by building relationships and being able to meet everyone, so I can see them.

“I look forward to the next few months, to see what we have, and we’ll go from there. There will be plenty of work to be done, but I think they will be rolling their sleeves up and working hard.”

Maryborough Giants co-president Mark Raven hailed the signing of Cupido as a statement of intent from the club.

“We’re excited to not only land a player of his calibre, but also finalise the coaching position that we’ve been searching for a while. We’re looking forward to seeing what Damian can do,” he said.

“Football is his life. He’s picked up a lot of experience along the way, which he’ll be able to bring to the Giants, which has a lot of young people across both clubs. He’ll teach them plenty of life skills, with his experience at AFL level and higher leagues than the MCDFNL.”

Raven says the ability to celebrate the recent season as both Royal Park and Maryborough Rovers in their final year appealed to Cupido, while also adding that he has already started doing research on the task ahead.

“He was excited by the prospect of the amalgamation. When we talked to him, he thought we were just starting the process, so when we explained that we went through the process, he said that we were able to celebrate the year, and he thought it was fantastic,” he said.

“Then he came back, and said he wanted to be a part of it.

“Damian is very intelligent. He didn’t know a lot about the clubs and the league coming in, but he has researched and invested a lot of time."

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