Marco Bello

[shanghaied]

Interesting article on him at Box Hill Hawks

http://leader-news.whereilive.com.au/sport/story/never-too-late-to-debut/

[wycbloods]

i was worried you were saying he was coming back to Centrals. Like they need more quality footballers

[Big Phil]

I posted this about Marco over on the Centrals forum earlier in the week...

Just thought some might be interested to know about one of our club greats in Marco Bello...

After retiring from Centrals to go back to Victoria Marco decided to play local footy and went back to his original club in Suburban Melbourne, the Nunawading Football Club. I reckon he suffered a knee injury in his first preseason training sessions and had to miss a year of footy.

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed in Inside Football they had all the INS and OUTS for the VFL and the Box Hill Hawks (the club we recruited Bello from) had a Bello as an IN for the Hawks. I guess I thought it was likely to be him, however, seeing as though he will be 34 years old in August this year, wasn't sure to what capacity he was recruited.

I read with great interest in the Advertiser today the results from the VFL and Box Hill got up over Coburg by a couple of goals and that the best on ground for Box Hill was Bello. I looked a little further into it and found the Box Hill Hawks website with the following player profile:

Here is the link I found it at: http://www.boxhillhawks.com.au/the-team/player-profiles.aspx



Name: Marco Bello
Number: 23
Date of Birth: 12/08/1976
Height (cm): 175
Weight (kg): 72
Previous Clubs: Nunawading/Central Districts (SA)


Also read on their match review the following sentence: "Congratulations to Marco Bello in his best on ground performance winning the Gibbs-Lines Medal." This was the VFL equivilant of the Bob Quinn Medal in the SANFL and great to see Dinga win it.

Quite funny that Marco won his award playing in the VFL and Chad O'Sullivan (who took over the number 7 from Bello) was able to win the Bob Quinn here in our demolition of the Bays. Not a bad effort for a soon to be 33 year old who had a knee reco. Congratulations to Marco and perhaps Granty needs to have a chat to him about coming back and having another run with us !!??

[Jimmy]

a very good little player but i will always remember him getting caught holding the ball by timmy weatherald in the 2002 gf and i think timmy goaled from that free too

[doggies4eva]

a very good little player but i will always remember him getting caught holding the ball by timmy weatherald in the 2002 gf and i think timmy goaled from that free too

I wish you wouldn't bring up upsetting things like this Jimmy. I have been trying to forget that game. After all it was 5 doggie premierships ago

[Dogwatcher]

Yeah jimmy!

[purch]

a very good little player but i will always remember him getting caught holding the ball by timmy weatherald in the 2002 gf and i think timmy goaled from that free too

I wish you wouldn't bring up upsetting things like this Jimmy. I have been trying to forget that game. After all it was 5 doggie premierships ago

Haha. How could one forget...I remember the little bugger trying to be a smart ar5e and dummy around Whiteman on the grandstand wing in that same game. Madness just lined him up and made him look like a rabbit in the headlights.

[Jimmy]

a very good little player but i will always remember him getting caught holding the ball by timmy weatherald in the 2002 gf and i think timmy goaled from that free too

I wish you wouldn't bring up upsetting things like this Jimmy. I have been trying to forget that game. After all it was 5 doggie premierships ago

Haha. How could one forget...I remember the little bugger trying to be a smart ar5e and dummy around Whiteman on the grandstand wing in that same game. Madness just lined him up and made him look like a rabbit in the headlights.

maybe that was it...i think i am thinking of when timmy caught macgowan HTB....whiteman was a star in that game, his breakout i reckon.

sorry doggy fans, we havent had too much to smile about this past few years.

[Big Phil]

Another good story on former Doggies star Marco Bello...

BELLO TO GO WITH THE FLOW

By Paul Amy - INSIDE FOOTBALL


Marco Bello had no intentions of playing for the Box Hill Hawks this season.

The 32-year-old had gone back to his old club in January as an assistant coach, with a brief to put peepers on the younger Hawks.

He figured the best way to do it was to train with them, with his own fitness a fringe benefit.

Come the practice matches the filled in for the reserves, and did so well that coach Brendon Bolton urged him to consider playing.

“My body was feeling alright, so I thought, why not give it a go?” Bello told Inside Football.

“I was actually getting excited about it as the first round got closer.”

Bello, who played at Box Hill in 1998-99, started the year with a best-afield effort in the reserves. He has been in the top team since, standing out with his neat left-foot. He is as clean as new cutlery.

But we should not be surprised that he has made such an assured return, despite his veteran status (by Inside Football’s calculations he his the oldest player in the VFL).

He is, after all, a five-time premiership player with Central District in the SANFL, which he joined in 2000.

He went to South Australia thinking it would be a 12-month adventure. Seven years later he returned to Melbourne with medals and memory aplenty.

“Right place at the right time,” he said, “I could never have imagined it would have worked out like that.”

Bello joined Eastern league third division club Nunawading in 2006, content to have a kick with some mates. It wasn’t a happy homecoming: he did an ACL. But he recovered sufficiently to win Nunawading’s best and fairest in 2007-08.

“Having that year off with the knee, I reckon it freshened me up mentally,” he said “I was missing footy.”

Heading into this season he was unsure what he would do.

But a chance meeting with former Centrals teammate Rick Macgowan in a city beer garden set him on a return to City Oval after a 10-year absence.

Macgowan explained there was a role going at Box Hill and wondered if Bello was interested. He followed up with a phone call: a deal was done.

“It’s funny how things work out,” Bello said, “If I hadn’t bumped into him I’d proably be at Nunawading or even retired, who knows?”

Bello reckons his time away from state league football has allowed him to “sneak under the radar a bit”.

Certainly Williamstown coach Bradley Gotch was staggered to learn that Bello is 32, “Is he?” he asked in a high-pitched voice when informed of Bello’s age during the ABC TV telecast of the Round 8 Port Melbourne-Box Hill Hawks clash.

“Yeah, I had a laugh about that,” Bello said, “I suppose I don’t look 32 because I’ve always had a baby face.”

Bello knows the VFL is a young man’s competition, but he’s not feeling his age just yet.

“It’s obviously a quicker game since I was playing in the VFL but my body is feeling OK and my mindset is OK,” he said.

“I’m just happy to have a run whenever they pick me. It’s good fun. It’s more about little spurts for me, give what I’ve got for five or 10 minutes and let the young blokes take over.

“I’m enjoying playing and that’s a part of it. It’s your mindset that takes you through to 36 or 37, like a Robert Harvey. We’ll see how far we can go.”

[Sam_goUUUdogs]

I was in Melbourne yesterday so went out to Box Hill City Oval to watch Marco play, he seemed pretty happy to see a Centrals scarf at the players race after the final siren

The match yesterday featured North Ballarat, who going into the round were sitting 2nd, having won 9 of their 10 matches this season, the other team was Box Hill who had won 6 from 11 and were sitting 7th in a 13 team league,
It was a great game, with Box Hill getting home by about 13 points after trailing North Ballarat by as much as 37 at one stage in the game.

Marco had quite abit of it, and seems to be one of the crowd favorites out there.
He did a couple crucial things in the 3rd quarter when the game was in the balance, including a brilliant little cameo run which saw him take possession inside defensive 50, weave his way past a couple of defenders and then hit a target on the wing, followed up his kick to receive a handball from the player he gave it to, and then hit a target just outside 50, the coach highlighted this in his 3 qtr time address as 1 of 2 key bits of play for the quarter.
Marco did appear to hang back from the contest more than i ever remember him doing at Centrals, and at times it almost looked like he didn't really want the ball, but it probably just seemed this way as I made a point of watching him
The 1st half was fairly scrappy from Box Hill, with plenty of mistakes, dropped marks, missed targets, silly turnovers etc, but Bello certainly seemed to be one of the better more efficient players, the other notable standout in this regard for both the 1st and 2nd half was one Steve Kenna.

As for the VFL, this was my first live VFL experience, excluding state games, and i was very impressed and really enjoyed the day.

One of the really unique things you can do at Box Hill is go into the Social club at the back of the grandstand where the 3WBC commentators are based and watch the game with commentary, people are still able to talk and make abit of noise within reason, but there is no security, or formal rules, it just seems to be something that is done in good faith, im not sure if this is just something Box Hill do or if its a VFL wide thing, but it really is a great way to watch the footy live, and an even better way to get out of the cold wind for awhile
And yes, there is a bar in there

Box Hill is currently putting the finishing touches on their new Southern Pavilion, which has been built on top of the Box Hill rooms, it will look rather impressive once complete, it will include 2 function rooms with views of the oval, administration offices, plus full social and spectator amenities, this should improve the facilities at the oval for the average spectator, as their isn't to much undercover seating available at the moment, the current social club would hold no more than probably 75 people at any one time, and the grandstand at the oval seats about 200 max, and it seems like it is reserved for players families, injured players etc, and not really for the public.
There is plenty of park benches around the oval, and quite a few of them are on the terraces under a large shade cloth structure, but unfortunately that doesn't do to much once the rain starts coming down.

One of the biggest differences i found between the SANFL and the VFL is the people who attend games, most people at SANFL games appear to support a club, whereas at the VFL it seems a large percentage of the people in attendance simply follow the club due to an AFL connection, except for the bloke who runs the BBQ & Bar at Box Hill, he is definitely a genuine supporter
The crowd for the match was probably around the 1000 mark.

The Prices at the VFL are all pretty similar to the SANFL, $10 entry, $3 for a footy record (budget), but the drinks were abit cheaper than the SANFL, full strength beers were $4, and a bottle of water costs $2.

The lack of Victorians at the VFL appears to be abit of a problem, with one Port Magpies supporter questioning whether there was actually any Victorians at the VFL, after realising there was about 10 SANFL supporters from SA at the game

The standard of the football on display in my opinion is not quite up to the standard of the SANFL, its probably not really fair to make a judgment having only been to 1 game, but using yesterdays game as a template, i think the VFL seems to just slightly trail the SANFL in a few key on field area's, resulting in a noticeable difference in the overall quality of football, but in fairness to the VFL, the conditions were not great yesterday, and I have seen plenty of SANFL games that were far from the standard of the match yesterday.

Having said the above regarding the quality of football, it takes nothing away from the level of entertainment at the VFL, yesterdays match was a cracker, and without doubt one of the best games of footy i have seen all season.