Sheffield Steelers' head coach Aaron Fox reflects on his team's stunning treble-winning 2023-24 Elite League campaign and looks ahead to the challenges next season will bring ...
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00There's always pressure in this business, certain clubs, the expectations are higher
00:13and there's more pressure in certain spots, but that just comes with the territory in
00:19this business.
00:20I'm pretty confident in the work I put in, you know, whether that translates into trophies
00:28that's not going to change from my end, I'm still going to be that guy that's first guy
00:35in and last guy out, which is the way it's supposed to be in this business.
00:43I think in the summer here it's a little bit different, now I feel like we've got a pretty
00:50good core group of guys that will be back next year so I can be a little bit more selective
00:54and patient on things this summer, which is nice, whereas the turnover was a bit high
01:01in the last couple of years, but you know, we just won 3 and I can guarantee you that
01:07the pressures and the bars have been set now for next year and that's never going to change
01:13in this situation and I'm completely comfortable with it.
01:18Success can work both ways in terms of recruitment, can't it, it can obviously make your players
01:22that have helped you achieve that success a more attractive proposition to clubs elsewhere,
01:26but it also probably attracts more players to you because they're attracted to a successful team.
01:33Yeah, I think so, I think this organisation does an unbelievable job of taking care of
01:37its guys at the rink, away from the rink, so it's a very good situation for players
01:43to come into, obviously with us playing in the Champions League next year, I think some
01:47of the guys that are going to be back are very excited about that.
01:51I'm not sure, we'll see if it's a selling point to some other guys when I'm recruiting
01:57over the summer, I'm not sure it is or it isn't, but I'll find that out obviously when
02:01I'm having conversations, but you know, we've got a really good situation to recruit to,
02:10like that's never been an issue here, and I can't say anything bad about some of the
02:15other teams in this league that also have very good situations to recruit to, the league's
02:19really, really good, it's gotten better and better year on year, there's a gap between
02:27the top to the bottom, it's closed significantly from my first year here, there's no easy gains
02:34and it's an exciting time to be a part of this league and to be a fan of this league
02:40to be fair.
02:41What's the next challenge for that group in yourself, obviously you've raised the bar
02:45like you said earlier, how do you maintain and even probably go upwards from that if
02:52that's possible?
02:53I think expectations are always going to be high for this group, no matter what we did
03:00the year before, for us being able to, again we'll set the same exact goals next year when
03:09guys come in that we did this year and we'll need the same amount of things to go right
03:15and you know, for us to be successful and you know, I love the group we've got coming
03:23back up to date, as we've seen it's not going to be everybody, you know, Nicky Newell-Engen
03:30isn't coming back, he's gone back to Finland, he took a job in Switzerland, so it's very
03:35clear that we're not going to run it back with our same group.
03:39Do you feel that groups still need refreshing, despite how successful they are sometimes?
03:44Well again, I think everyone's going to try to get better and you know, whether we can
03:51get better or not, that's a pretty high standard of only losing 9 names, so that's not an expectation
03:56but it's making sure that we feel like the group we're going to bring back can win and
04:03you know, again there's no blueprint for replicating the type of season we had, but
04:10I feel like the pieces that we're bringing back are good pieces and if I can do a good
04:16job filling in the gaps that we're going to need to replace, then I think we'll be in
04:22a real good spot to start the year, but then again, the work starts again and you can't
04:28be complacent, you can't think it's going to be easy, you've got to grind and play winning
04:34hockey from September, which isn't easy.