JUST two months ago, Bridgewater’s Nic Naughton was kicking the dew off the grass in the reserves.
Coach Lachlan Sharp and the selection committee dropped him for two matches to let him find some form in the seconds.
When he returned to the senior side, wingman Naughton was transformed into a pressure forward, and he hasn’t looked back since.
Naughton – ‘Noodles’ to his teammates – was OK with being dropped, and more than OK with being given a different role in his second coming.
He’d always considered himself to be a forward being played out of position.
And the proof is in the pudding – Naughton, 22, has kicked a goal in each of his seven matches up forward, including bags of five against reigning premiers Marong and three against last season’s other grand finalist Pyramid Hill.
All seven of those matches have been wins as the Mean Machine has surged to the top of the ladder.
“I was lucky to get on the end of five that day (against Marong),” he said.
“Everyone else does a fair bit of work up the ground, and I was lucky to have a couple of great forwards in Sharpy and Oscar McKinley down there taking the two best defenders.”
Bridgewater footy club runs in the family – father Wayne was a premiership player in 1991 – but Nic’s journey began in the under-10s at Marong.
He stayed there until the under-16s and transferred to Bridgey as soon as the opportunity to play under-18 football arose.
That happened when he was just 12.
Naughton’s first senior game was in 2019, when he was 16 and the under-18s had a week off. He was a regular in the senor side when COVID hit, and his reaction to the pandemic is an unusual one.
“It made you a bit lazy,” Naughton said. “I struggled with motivation, and when footy came back I was a bit of a lazy footballer.
“Everyone likes a bit of a break, don’t they?”
The COVID years did give “lazy” Nic a chance to work on his skills and the one-touch football with which he prides himself.
Now that he appears to have convinced the coaching staff that he is a natural forward, Naughton wants to keep on improving.
With fly in-fly out McKinley absent last week against Calivil and also unavailable this coming round, Naughton welcomes the extra responsibility but also notes that the forward line is a “collective”.
And he admits that thoughts can occasionally stray to what might be ahead for the Mean Machine in 2025.
“It’s hard not to fall into the trap of looking at the finals, but we still have a job to do,” Naughton said.
“We still have to focus on what we have got ahead and play each minute as it comes.”
Any coach would be delighted to hear such words from a young player, and Sharp in his first year as solo coach has made a huge impression on Naughton, who clearly has learnt well.
“Sharpy’s unbelievable. He’s developed a great culture on and off the field.
“When you need a kick up the arse you get a kick up the arse, but you can also have a bit of fun with him off the field, and that is really important.
“That is what drives a young group. With a coach like that you can have a bit of fun on and off the field.”
Naughton said Sharp has provided “a new voice” after Rick Ladson’s departure from Bridgewater.
“We’re playing the same sort of system, but Sharpy’s way.”
Family has always been important for Naughton, who plays at Bridgey with brothers James and Toby.
In 2022 they managed to play together in a senior game, but injury has restricted Toby to mainly reserves football since then.
Naughton was raised on the family farm at Lockwood, where his tennis fanatic parents had a court on which the youngsters were always having a hit.
Tennis is still part of Naughton’s life.
Earlier this year he played with his mother, aunt and cousin in the Derby team that made the grand final in the Marong tennis association but fell at the last hurdle.
“It’s just about being able to have a bit of fun, having a bit of a laugh with the family.”
Naughton also turned out four times for Bridgewater on the club’s return to the Upper Loddon cricket competition after a year in recess.
He said if the club was able to field a team next summer, he might turn to cricket and put tennis on the back burner for a while.
Whatever he chooses, he’s never far away from the sporting field.
That’s true in a literal sense, as Naughton has worked for the past five years for Bridgewater president Tim Ferguson as a mechanic at Ferguson Motors on the Calder Highway, almost in the shadow of the light towers at the Mean Machine’s home ground.
And at home is dad Wayne, who is on the Loddon Valley league’s board.
Throw in Sharpy, and there’s a decent crop of mentors for a young bloke to follow.
Sensibly, he doesn’t want to get ahead of himself, and he hates talking about himself.
He’s not one to pump himself up, Naughton says, “although maybe at 12 o’clock at a nightclub I might get going.”