All-rounder is a term used as flippantly as any in sporting circles, often without full consideration of just how flexible the case study is to different scenarios or settings in their given sport.
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When it comes to Peter Hall, the all-rounder status is well deserved, his sporting acumen spread across a number of competitive situations.
Hall will partner with long-time Kyabram netball mentor, and former premiership player, Rhianna (Raz) Hilton to coach the Bombers’ Goulburn Valley League A-grade netball team in 2025.
The father-of-three, who owns and operates a Fenaughty St cabinet painting business, has adapted to a variety of roles as both a player and a coach.
In the last decade and a half he has coached both senior and underage football and netball teams, been involved as a volunteer with the Kyabram athletics movement and run his own small harness racing stable.
Success has followed him on the football field, the netball court, into the boxing ring and into a sporting field a little outside of the mainstream, the trotting track.
He is a four-time senior football premiership player, two with Merrigum and two with Lancaster, won a netball premiership as a coach with Shepparton United and is three from three as an amateur boxer.
If you know Hall, however, it is most definitely not all about him.
“I’m looking forward to working with Raz, retaining all players and continuing to develop all grades. Our aim is to create higher ladder positions for all teams,” he said.
The new role is as challenging as any Hall has faced in his 30-plus years as a leader and mentor of sporting teams.
Kyabram’s A-grade netball team won just one game last year and finished second bottom on the ladder.
There is, however, plenty of light at the end of what is seemingly a long tunnel. The team’s 2024 best and fairest winner is still a teenager, and the runner-up in the award was another player promoted straight out of the 17-and-under squad.
Then there is the athletic goal-shooting figure of Natasha Dodos sitting in the offensive half-circle for the club.
Hall has a vested interest in the club, outside of his recent under-age football coaching roles and assistant coach role alongside this year’s senior football joint coaches Corey Carver and Kaine Herbert.
His daughter Jemma is captain of the A-grade team and has a typically determined approach to the sport, shared by her mother, Lindy, and older sisters, Ali and Elivia.
If strike rate is any sort of indication of success, then Hall will be hopeful he can repeat what he has achieved on the trotting track.
At one stage last year, when he had trained just eight starters he had produced five winners, a second, a third and a fifth.
“When you finish playing footy you’ve got to get into something else, and I got into harness racing,” he said.
“I’ve always been heavily involved in football and netball coaching, but the harness racing was my sporting interest outside that, and I’ve just managed it around my other commitments with family, kids and work.
“I just like to do one horse at a time. I love it, but it’s all about getting the balance right. My wife, Lindy, and my daughters, Ali, Elivia and Jemma, are a fantastic support to me and have been since I first started in the sport.”
Hall will no doubt be tapping into that support network again in his new coaching role, so club officials will be hoping he is again back in the winners’ circle when it comes to the sport of netball.