Broome Towns look to knock Cable Beach off premiership perch in upcoming 2024 season

The Cable Beach Greenbacks will look to add a fifth notch in a row to their premiership belt as the West Kimberley Football League season prepares to kick off next weekend on April 17. In the first round, last years premiers will take on runner-ups Broome Towns in a rematch of the 2023 grand final in an exciting launch to the footy season. The match will be a good proving ground to see if Cable Beach have kept their skills up to snuff over the off season or if the Broome Towns have now out paced them on the footy field. Ethan Corpus who coached the team to the premiership last year has taken a step back this year with local Cable Beach legend Joseph Dann stepping up to the plate. Dann himself, who stepped away from the playing the game after last year’s win, has a host of experience having played for the club for 16 years and being a part of 10 premiership wins for the club since 2007 and is sure to bring his wealth of football experience to the coaching role. Broome Towns coach Andrew Blackley said despite losing a few players the team was looking to redeem themselves from last years premiership loss. “We’ve had a good preseason and lost a handful of players but we have gotten a bunch of decent recruits to replace them,” he said. “We’re hoping to go one better this year but other teams will also be improving.” Cable Beach also reign supreme in the women’s league, having collected their third premiership after winning in 2018 and 2021. Last year they managed to take down the Looma Eagles in the grand final, another star side in the league who have also collected two premierships since the league officially started in 2017. Cable Beach women’s coach Mick Albert said he was confident the team could pull out another win this year. “Hopefully, things go well,” he said “A couple of players have retired and sort of walked away from footy but we picked up a few new players as well and some fresh players as well that are brand new to footy too.” “Preseason has been pretty good so we’re looking forward to having another good year this year.” “We’ll keep the same format of working out on the track and getting our good ball players around the footy as much as we can to get it up forward to guys like Katherine and Simone Narkle.” “They’re good players. Katherine Dann especially has been training really well through preseason so we should have a fairly solid forward line.” “The women have been training for about 10 weeks now and they’re looking forward to having a good season against the other teams this year.” Female football in Broome only started in the past decade with the first game of women’s football in Broome played in 2015. Since then the women’s game has rapidly expanded to a fully fledged league in recent years, drawing women of all age groups into the sport. Round one of the men’s competition will also feature matches between the Broome Bulls and the Derby Tigers, the Peninsula Bombers and the Looma Eagles, and Broome Saints and the Bidyadanga Emus down at the Broome Recreation and Aquatic Centre ovals on April 17. Fixtures for the womens’ competition are yet to be announced.