The NTFA's top flight competition returns this weekend with a new name and plenty of new faces. The premier division will feature the same nine teams that competed in 2018's division 1 competition, but should see a tighter battle at the top as a host of clubs look to rein in two-time champion South Launceston. Hillwood and Bridgenorth have both recruited heavily over the pre-season and have both set their sights on a top-three finish, while 2018's bottom two George Town and Deloraine will be looking to break into finals for the first time in a number of years.  Here's a look at how all the teams are shaping up heading into round one.  RELATED: NTFA division 1 season preview COACH: Andrew Philpott INS: Callum Mulder, Jackson Chorley (returning), Bayley Neil (Launceston), Kaden Bracken (South Burnie), Tom Broadhurst OUTS: Craig Burling (retired), Gary Shipton, Logan Wright (Bridgenorth) LAST SEASON: Runner-up COACH SAYS:  I'm being realistic when I say we've had a few changes - a change of game plan, bringing some kids through - so at this stage to make finals [is the aim], maybe we've got to take a step back to take two steps forward.  The mentality at the moment is not to put too much expectation on these blokes, it's more about putting a few things right on and off the field with the playing group, understanding what it takes to win a Div 1 premiership. This year's all about culture for me - building the right culture going forward so that our kids that are coming through and our recruits know exactly what it means to play for Bracknell. I've got four kids that have really impressed me in the pre-season - Sam Goodluck, Alex Johns, Lochie Pearn and Heath Beams - those four kids would have done 95 per cent of the work.  I can't see all four playing a year in the seniors but they'll get good game time, and they're the future leaders and 200-plus game players of our club.   COACH: Brady Demejier INS: Gary Shipton, Logan Wright (Bracknell), Nick Milburn (East Devonport), Rohan Sergeant, Nathan Van Noord (returning), Jake Nunn, Tom Cooper, Adam Dickenson, Jake Rice (Launceston), Jimmy Mitchell (Lindisfarne) OUTS: Jake Kilby (St Pats) LAST SEASON: Sixth  COACH SAYS: We're definitely aiming for a top-three finish. We've got a quality list this year that we've been putting a solid pre-season in with so the boys are up and about and biting at the bit to get into round one.  Nick Milburn from East Devonport is a quality player who I reckon will catch a few sides off guard after not being in our NTFA, and Luke Duncan has returned to form after a year out from having a reco on his hip.  COACH: Bradley Powe INS: Lochie Dornauf (Victoria amateurs), Rory Gurr, Nathan Rataj (Latrobe) Tyson Gardam (East Devonport), Tristan Webb (North Launceston), David Brown (Meander Valley), Callum Peck (Bracknell)  OUTS: Josh Murray (Old Launcestonians), Tait Highet (Devonport) LAST SEASON: Eighth COACH SAYS: We're looking to keep promoting youth and we've had really good numbers on the track, we've had over 85 different players training through pre-season. It's not just just focusing on a one-year plan it's a three-year plan and this is our second year and things are slowly heading the right direction - our focus is not really on wins and losses but improvement. Brad Crowden should break the senior club games record this year, he played his 300th game last year and should rack that off in the first few games next year - the only problem is he's taking it off me.  Ashton Heathcote is a young bloke who's doing everything right, I think he's in for a big season. He's got a special talent and if he can bring what he's bringing so far I think we're in for some special stuff towards the end of the year from him.  COACH: Allan O'Sign INS: Zach Burt, Corey Nankervis (North Launceston), Luke Crane, Todd Crane, Corey Burr, Josh Knight (returning)  OUTS: Nil LAST SEASON: Ninth COACH SAYS: [Our recruits] are all experienced campaigners and I'll be counting on them to provide leadership throughout the games and off field as well to help share the burden with coaches and develop the young list we have. The list has done the hard yards and we've just been crying out for these experienced players which we're lucky to have now. Joel Digney, Sam Freeman and Dylan Baker are all young players who are putting their hands up for round one - I've been impressed with their work rate, attitude and commitment to the season so far.  We don't really have an expectation on win-losses but I think if we play the footy we've been showing in our practice matches in the lead-up I think we can really push teams. We've still got a long way to go but I think we're heading in the right direction. COACH: Nathan Lowe INS: Jake Pearce, Tom Bennett (North Launceston), Zac Oldenhof, Mack Blazely, Matt Dikkenberg (Launceston), Shannon Buller (Deloraine), Sam Bannister (Evandale) OUTS: Adam Humzy (mainland), Tom Wilson LAST SEASON: Fourth COACH SAYS: Matt Dikkenberg is a six-foot-eight ruckman, Mack Blazely has done the Mariner program and his father originally played with Hillwood for a couple of games so he wanted to come down and follow in his father's footsteps. Tom Bennett in my opinion is the best centre-half forward in Tassie. He's got the best set of hands I've seen on a footballer and he's going to be great for us. Last time he played he kicked over 100 goals for Hillwood as a 19-year-old and Jake [Pearce] is a workhorse - he's got that never give-in attitude, a great leader and everyone around the club respects him very highly. I think it's the most since I've been at the club that we've had the core of the senior players training every night so we're all keen, all getting to know the game plan very well. We want to go real deep into finals - we relied too heavily on Andrew Whitmore last year so this year we've done a lot of recruiting, we've got some mature bodies around our young guys and that's going to play a big part.  COACH: Beau Thorp INS: Jacob Wiggers (Ulverstone) OUTS: Brad Symmons  LAST SEASON: Fifth COACH SAYS: We've put a lot of time into our younger guys - they're where our club will improve. In the last three years our under-18s have won three premiership so there's some really good players in that age group. Jacob Wiggers has definitely impressed over the pre-season, Jake Murfet has been really good and Connor Alexander has had a brilliant pre-season. He'll probably play in the backline in our senior side, I think he's lost something like 15 kilos so he's had a really good pre-season.  A lot of our training has been based around our pressure and effort so we'll look for that to be one of our key indicators of how we're going. COACH: Andrew Cox-Goodyer INS: Jordan Cousens (North Launceston), Sam Maddern (Bendigo), Mitch Cordell, Luke Purdon (returning) OUTS: Jono Smart (St Pats), Ben Elmer (North Launceston), Lyndon Stubbs LAST SEASON: Seventh COACH SAYS: Our target is to get back into finals - before last year we hadn't missed finals since 2008. Corey Anderson's had a pretty big pre-season and young Brayden Claridge is hopefully going to take another step forward this year.  Sam [Maddern] will be a midfielder-wingman. He's very fit and has just completed a marathon recently so he'll be pretty handy for us in that department. We've lost our key recruit Jordan Cousens to injury which is very unfortunate but that's football and I think the group have worked around that and he's still involved helping out the boys. COACH: Geoff Mohr INS: Hayden Goss (returning), Tyler Towns  OUTS: Joe Krushka, Nat Barnett (Bridport) LAST SEASON: Third COACH SAYS:  We didn't go out and try and recruit a heap of blokes, we just went out and tried to get what we thought we needed.  I think we've got four blokes over 30 and the rest are between 20 and 25, so I think we're setting ourselves up for a pretty bight future.  Guys like Daniel Viney and Brady Gee, they're only like 20 or 21 and they're flying, and Zach Bean finished runner-up in our best and fairest last year playing back pocket and he's looking pretty good. Since I started coaching we've still got 11 players in our side from that first year, 15 from the second year and 19 that are still playing from last year so that's what we're trying to build on. If you start bringing in five or six blokes in every year you've got to teach them again, so we're relying on that half our list is playing their fourth season together.  COACH: Aaron Viney  INS: Zach Sutherland (South Australia), Jak Hadley (St Pats), Brad Dodds, Caleb Bushing (Longford) OUTS: Tom Reinmuth (year off), Jordan Tepper (North Launceston), Nicholas Denholm (East Coast) Jack Maher (Evandale) LAST SEASON: Premier COACH SAYS: We're losing Jordan Tepper, he won the Hec Smith medal last year, and a bit of experience with Tom Reinmuth but with that comes opportunity for the younger guys to step up. There's been some guys from under-18s like Evan Stagg, Caleb Moore, Jesse Rhodes, Liam Hollingsworth, Kaleb Canning - I'm sure all these guys at stages will be playing a fair bit of senior footy. Then our other younger guys are a year older like Bowen Pearce who's a two-time premiership player at the age of 18, and Josh Harris has another pre-season under his belt. We probably won't have the team we had last year but we'll be looking to blood some young guys and as long as they improve throughout the year and get some games under their belt I'll feel I've done my job. We won't rate ourselves on wins and losses this year, it's more about getting games into the young guys so the future of the footy club looks really good. We'll be around the mark and playing finals footy - whether we go all the way to the grand final or get knocked out in the first week of finals, time will tell. Love local footy? Sign up to our weekly newsletter here.
