WERRIBEE has long been considered a footy factory, producing AFL talent like Riley Bice, Shaun Mannagh, Jack Henderson, and Zac Banch.

The AFL world isn't just looking on the field for talent at Melborune Avalon Airport Oval, either, with the club's last two head coaches - Michael Barlow and Jimmy Allan – plucked for AFL assistant roles for North Melbourne and St Kilda respectively.

So, for new coach Dan Lowther, the challenge is navigating that balance between wanting the club and its individuals to perform at their best, and the side effect of being prepared to lose those people to greater opportunity.

“You want your team to win. You build a program and a plan around the strength of your squad, and then those things get taken away from you. You can celebrate the fact that the individual has had a great result if they were to go to the AFL landscape, and that's a big tick for the club and the program,” Lowther said on the State of Play podcast.

“But then how do you fill that void off the back of a game style and a plan that's still around those types of players?

“I think Werribee's gone through that the last two or three years, with players getting drafted mid-season, end of season, which is a great thing for the Werribee footy club. How do you fill that on-field performance so that the rest of the team can taste success in the right way, whether it be through wins or their own performance?”

It is a new challenge for Lowther, who parted ways with Geelong in November after five seasons at the helm of its AFLW program.

With Jimmy Allan leaving the seat at Werribee vacant, it was an obvious opportunity for Lowther to step into. It has allowed him to remain in coaching and continue to develop his skills in the space.

“For me, the timing was right to change things up. The Geelong footy club timing was right too, and yeah I've been pretty lucky to fall into a club like Werribee whose culture on field and off field has been superb, and here we go on a new journey,” Lowther said.

The new journey started with a bang on Sunday, as the Tigers knocked off the highly fancied Gold Coast Suns at People First Stadium. It hasn't been without a heavy workload, though, as Lowther is still getting his head around the heaving VFL competition.

Following the addition of both Tasmania and St Kilda to the competition this year, and the addition of five clubs from the former North East Australian Football League (NEAFL) in 2021, there are now 22 teams in the VFL located up and down the eastern seaboard of Australia.

And that's on a macro level. Bringing it back purely to the Werribee program he now oversees, the official list of 42 alone is greater than any AFLW list, let alone the added development and train on players one must factor in.

“It's been a bit of a whirlwind,” Lowther admitted.

“You go into a program with 50 players, 60 players who are training. There's train-ons, there's development lists, there's primary lists, there's a whole lot of personnel to make sure that we're across.

“So, getting your head around all of that, for me, has been something to lock in on, and obviously getting up to speed on the context of where the clubs come from as well.

“It's forever evolving and changing under your feet, so there's a lot of that that I'm getting my head around."

Lowther will have the opportunity to make it two wins from two starts on Saturday, when Werribee takes on newly-standalone club Sandringham at Wilson Storage Trevor Barker Beach Oval.

“Every week is going to be a bit of a challenge for us, particularly getting the head around upcoming opposition coaching style, game method, those things,” he said.

“Our approach is to focus on us and I know it's a bit of a throwaway line, but we had 10 debutants for our team (in Round 1).

‘There's enough on our plate to worry about, for getting our game right, and very conscious and respectful of what we're coming up against, too.”