South nabbed third on the table last season and was ousted at the first finals hurdle, beaten 2-1 by Strathdale.
Star forward Willie Sauiluma is the biggest out for the Southerners, the Samoan youth international heading back to the Goulburn Valley Suns to try his hand at the higher level, and Nick Marino, Hayden Dealy, Justin Cirillo, Brendan Barton and Anthony Colandro have also departed.
But while many have left, more have joined, leaving Saracino satisfied with his squad.
‘‘We’ve probably lost six or seven guys from the squad of our last game last season and we’ve got a few to come in before we really get that cohesiveness,’’ he said.
‘‘Sean Cooney is a new one, he played a practice match with us last Sunday, he’s a central defensive midfielder, he looks a likely type and a ready-made replacement for what we’ve lost.
‘‘Zac Tyson, he’s a centre-back and a like-for-like replacement. Kabir Kareem is in too, he’s another central defensive midfielder, and Peter Nedelkovski from Shepparton has joined us, he brings plenty of experience.’’
An interesting pair of signings are Goulburn Valley Suns’ juniors Anthony Damchev and Taylan Simsek, the duo, both 16, have been training with South’s seniors.
Simsek played 25 games with the Suns’ under-16s last season for eight goals, while Damchev had 25 appearances in the under-18s.
Again the Southerners will look to poacher Joel Aitken to top the scoring charts with 27 goals in 15 games last season, with Shaun Kane sure to be important too.
‘‘We just want to be playing the style of football we were toward the back end of last season, if we do that we’ve got every chance,’’ Saracino said.
‘‘We’ve got some physically strong players to counter the Bendigo sides, particularly Eaglehawk and Strathdale.
‘‘We want to be competitive and we aim to win every game, we’ve got the talent but it’s just about jelling and putting it all together on the park.’’
The Southerners starts the 2019 BASL season hosting Colts United at McEwen Reserve, a game it would certainly fancy its chances of finding three points in.
