Henwood Park to return to Football Wagga women's competition

Buik first joined the club back in 2001, and after spending the last three seasons in the Wagga City Wanderers women's program, will return home for next year's season.

Leading the club to six straight premierships between 2011 and 2016, Buik said he is excited to be returning to the Hawks.

"The Henwood Park committee is a good committee, Tony [Dobbin] is a really good operator, and he was there when I was on the committee," Buik said.

"I wouldn't have gone to any other club.

"It's the club I've had the most to do with over the years and they didn't have a women's team last season so it'll be nice to head back and help in relation to that and with the Wanderers now not running women's next year, that's 30 odd players who have come back into the local system and hopefully some of them will come back to Henwood Park, the girls that were with them before."

Confident the club will be able to reform the team, Buik said he's being realistic about expectations for the next season.

Having built the women's program from nothing in the mid-2000s, he's got experience in taking the club from nothing to something.

"I'm confident that we'll have a good team, we won't necessarily be the best team in the competition, but that doesn't matter, it's all about development," he said.

"That's what you want and as long as the girls enjoy it and having a good time playing, that's the main thing.

"I think my main goal is to get back into Leonard and Madden, so that we've got two grades, first grade and reserve grade, I'll get them back into the habit of training twice a week and get back into the fact that it should be enjoyable, it's club football, we're not playing for sheep stations."

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Reflecting to the last time the club was in a rebuilding stage, Buik said the club went through periods of losing 15-0, then 3-0, then winning games, and soon a premiership was on the table.

While not expecting or settling for blow-outs, he understands there'll be an adjustment period for the team as they reenter the competition.

"Coaching, it's a good challenge, it's like solving a puzzle all the time," Buik said.

"As long as we've competitive, and I'm hoping the local competition will welcome back all the [Wanderers] players that are coming back.

"Hopefully some of those players will be playing with other teams in first grade and it will strengthen up the local competition in a positive way."

While he hasn't asked any of the Wanderers players he coached this year to follow him to Henwood Park, Buik said he'd be pleased to have any of them on his team.

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