Sport
21 December, 2025
Robins has break to mull over future
MARONG legend Kain Robins has been given a month to decide on his football future.
Robins, who as playing co-coach led the Panthers to their fourth successive Loddon Valley flag in September, has been weighing up whether to retire or to play on since then.
New coach James Flaherty told the Loddon Herald he caught up with Robins recently and gave him until the middle of January to make up his mind.
Marong resumes training on Monday, January 19, and Flaherty said he needed to have an answer by then.
“We’ve just let it go, so far,” Flaherty said.
“He hasn’t trained and has been spending time with his family.
“He hasn’t committed or not committed, and we will touch base early in the new year.”
Another Panthers veteran, key position player Shaun Knott, is in the same category as Robins, and he too will need to make a call on his future by the time the club returns to training.
Meanwhile, Shannon Geary, one of the best players on the ground in the 2025 grand final, has left Marong after just one season.
Flaherty said he believed Geary had retired, with young children now starting out on their sporting journeys, but he could not be certain the powerful half-back would not play elsewhere.
Geary appeared in more than 200 games for multiple premierships with Strathfieldsaye in the powerful Bendigo league, was captain of the Storm and played representative football for the BFNL.
The LVFNL season begins on April 11, so Robins and Knott would be cutting it fine in terms of reaching full fitness if they choose to play on.
At the age of 41, Robins’ form in 2025 was good enough to win a place in the league’s Team of the Year.
He kicked 56 goals last season, including two critical goals at the start of the last quarter of the grand final against Bridgewater after being well held all afternoon by Joe Mayes.
The Mean Machine had closed to within eight points late in the third term and had all the momentum, but Robins’ two strong marks and goals quickly snuffed out any chance of a Bridgewater win.
If he decided to retire, he would be leaving on a high after winning a flag in all four full seasons with Marong, having first played in the COVID-affected 2021 season.
He was co-coach with non-playing leader Paul Thomson in 2025, taking out the premiership in his only year in charge.
Robins has admitted that it takes him longer to recovery physically from games as he gets older.
However, he started running after the end of the season to try to stay in shape should he decide to play on for another year.
Robins told the Loddon Herald in early November that he had to make “a tough call” after more than 450 games in a storied career in country football, and with well over 1000 goals to his credit.