Northcote City FC announced the resignation of senior coach Goran Lozanovski last Tuesday week.

Lozanovski coached Northcote for 101 games over the last four seasons and prior to that was assistant coach to Peter Tsolakis in season 2011. He brought championship success to the club, landing its first and only Premier League title in 2013 in just his second year at the helm.

Club vice-president and football operations manager Peter Kotsiris said that Lozanovski’s legacy at the club is a massive one. “Obviously bringing champion success to the club, the first coach to ever do it at the highest level. An incredible achievement. As far as the club’s concerned, Goran will be a friend of the club for life. He set standards which the next set of coaches will have to try to beat, which will be a challenge in itself.”

Although season 2015 was a struggle for the senior team, finishing in 10th spot and unable to mount a challenge to make the finals, Lozanovski’s resignation came as a surprise to the club. According to Kotsiris: “We were training for next season. Goran probably thought it was time to move on. He never indicated as much clearly, but it was obviously something he was wrestling with in his own mind. We respect his decision. We felt that we had to accept it, as difficult as it was, and we had to move on.”

“We’re disappointed (to lose Lozanovski), obviously,” Kotsiris added, “because we’re big on stability. We don’t want to be turning over coaches. Unfortunately we had a high turnover of playing personnel which made Loza’s job even harder, so it’s going to be a challenge to whoever comes in.”

Kotsiris says the club would like to appoint a senior coach sooner rather than later, but stresses that Northcote won’t be pressured or rushed into making a decision. “We need to be sure we’re going to make the right decision.

“The club is going to be looking for someone who understands the culture, the history of our club, understands the limitations of coaching our club. We’re not a club that can go out and sign players for an astronomical amount of money like some other clubs, like the South Melbournes, the Bentleighs, the Oakleighs of this world. So, it’s a challenge from that perspective. But having said that, we have a tremendous group of young talent. We’ve got more quality coming through as well. So we’re comfortable with where we’re at but we’ll need to sit down with the incumbent and go through what he would perceive to be requirements for the coming season.”