Inheriting a Saints side this season that has endured a lean run in recent years, Pearson has already made a significant impact upon the club, which was reflected in the make-up of the GVL side at the weekend.
It starts with Pearson himself, who was given the honour of leading the representative outfit despite it being his first season in the competition after moving to Victoria from Queensland, such has been his influence in a short span.
Five Saints donned the purple and gold on Saturday, too, with Nick Warnock earning a 10th interleague call up and was named vice-captain, starring in what was a tough outing for the defenders, while Benalla captain Chris Welsh and reigning best and fairest Mark Marriott were also valuable contributors, and both Kevin Maroney and David Mennen had impactful games.
Benalla thirds coach and senior assistant Jack Smyth was also involved on the day, while Max Smyth lined up in the forward line of the under-19 clash, with fellow Saint Connor Breheny included in the squad as an emergency.
Pearson said that to have such a strong Benalla contingent representing the league was of course a brilliant accomplishment and represents the noticeable growth of the club over the past year or so, but also warned that a return to the upper echelon of the GVL doesn’t happen overnight.
“It’s awesome,” he said of the Benalla involvement at the weekend.
“But look, by no means are Benalla out of the woods yet, we’re still in a position where we are sitting third bottom, but we’ve made some massive in-roads and we’ve really improved our club as a whole.
“From our senior group and our reserves group, this time last year the collective deficit was 1,125 points, now that’s 540, so we’ve halved that, and our thirds have already won one and a half more games to this point now than last year.
“So, we’re doing good things, it’s just going to take time.”
The good things have been well and truly on display in recent weeks for the senior side, too, which has been right in contention against a number of sides that are either finals bound or right in the hunt.
Within a kick against each of Echuca (second), Kyabram (seventh) and Seymour (third) in the final term, while also pushing Mooroopna (sixth) to a three-goal margin at the final siren, Benalla has shown it can compete against the best with a strong four-week stretch, however failing to come away with the victory in any of those contests has made for an exasperating month of football.
“It’s been super frustrating mate,” Pearson said.
“But what it does show is that we’re close, and that’s all you can ask for.
“We came into the season wanting to be competitive, and we feel like we are being competitive, and the main thing is we're competing really hard.
“That will change really quickly, it’ll change soon, and this time next year, those four narrow losses are probably four wins, so we feel like we're in an alright position.”
With five games to go until the end of the home and away season, Pearson and his side are determined to continue the good run of form, and hopefully see some reward for effort.
The run home starts against rivals Euroa this weekend on the road, before clashes against Mansfield, Shepparton, Tatura and Shepp Swans to close out the year, and the Saints aren’t shying away from any challenge.
“We think that we can win all five,” Pearson said.
“We’ve shown against Echuca, we’ve shown against Seymour and we’ve shown against Shepp Swans earlier in the year that we can match it with the best teams.
“So, we're going to go in every game thinking we can win, and that's what we're going out there to do.
“We're going out there not to make up numbers and not just taper away, we’re going out there to set up for next year.”
