Rain sparks new Cougar culture

By Gavin Staindl
SLUMPED in the dugout while rain slowly washed out Berwick’s home game against Williamstown was not the ideal way to spend a Saturday, but it may have been the spark to kick-start the Cougars’ season.
Although the washout will do nothing to help Berwick’s below-average 3-5 start to the season, Berwick coach Wayne Porter is hoping the time spent chatting in the dugout may lay the foundations for a side in desperate need of unity.
With the vast majority of Cougar players either above 30 years of age or below 23, Porter described the Division Two team as a club without culture.
“We need to get that team feeling back,” Porter said.
“We have no middle-age guys so players tend to stick with players their own age.
“We identified that we need to get a team culture … not one of drinking but where we can mix and rely on each other.
“Some places I’ve played at have little cliques – the old blokes always played in the firsts and there was not much mixing with younger guys.
“But I want to make it more so about getting along with each other.”
So despite only scraping 20 minutes of game time on Saturday, Porter was delighted his players had the opportunity to discuss baseball movies and bond in the dugout.
“When I played at Moorabbin the team would go out together and we all fitted in,” Porter said.
“It was only years later that I realised a lot of the guys I was hanging around with were five or six years older, but it didn’t matter.
“(On Saturday) they all sat in the dugout for an hour-and-a-half and talked about cr** and mingled.”
Porter, a life-member of the Moorabbin baseball club, will lead Berwick to his former hunting ground on Sunday and – for the first time in seven years – will play against the team he spent 26 years at.