The Werribee Football Club is pleased to announce that Development Manager Hamish MacInnes has been appointed as the new head coach of North Melbourne’s Next Generation Academy (NGA).

MacInnes will be able to continue his role with Werribee for the remainder of the 2024 season, where he heads up the development program for his third straight year. 

MacInnes has been a pivotal figure at Werribee since  starting as the Community Development Manager in 2019. After three seasons he transitioned to the football department in the role of Development Manager for the 2022 season, following a brief stint as interim Football Manager in 2020. As well as his commitments at Werribee, MacInnes also balanced a role as a PE teacher at Point Cook Secondary College until this recent appointment.

Hamish's contributions to Werribee's development program have been widely recognised over the past couple of seasons. Former Werribee senior coach, now North Melbourne's head of development, Michael Barlow was full of praise “Hamish MacInnes does a tremendous job in running the development area. It’s a holistic program where they come in, we develop their footy, but also we develop them as people.”

2023’s development group leader Jesse Clark endorsed Barlow’s thoughts “I was lucky enough to get voted in as the leader of the development group, and basically it’s built a bit of a platform for me in terms of taking my leadership to the next level. It just makes the transition from under-18s or local footy to VFL footy so much more efficient.” 

Small forward Connor Thar who has been with Werribee since 2019 added, “What they do here at Werribee with the development group, myself and the under 22’s have taken a lot of benefits and advantages from that.”