Lambton Jaffas have added North West Sydney attacker Matthew Cahill to their dual trophy-winning roster for the 2024 NPL men's Northern NSW season, but veteran defender Josh Piddington has moved to New Lambton.
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Cahill was equal top-scorer for Spirit last season with seven goals as the club finished 11th in the high-quality NSW NPL 1 competition.
The 23-year-old is a former Jets and Mariners academy product who also played NPL with APIA Leichhardt as well as in Hong Kong and with the University of Wisconsin. He joins Sean Pratt (Maitland), Jimmy Oates (Manly), Matthew Buettner (Sydney Olympic) and the returning Tom Waller (year off) as additions. Marquee mid-season recruit Nikolai Topor-Stanley has also signed on again.
Coach David Tanchevski was excited about what Cahill would bring to the team.
"He's a big, powerful striker and I think he will be pretty dominant in the league, and he's still young," Tanchevski said.
"He will be a good addition up top, which was probably one area where we were a little bit shallow this year with Sam Webb going back to left-back from the wing. It will give us another natural goalscorer and take pressure off Kale [Bradbery]."
He said Piddington, Kaleb Cox, Michael Finlayson and Charlie Kelly were departures.
Piddington, a multiple grand final winner at Broadmeadow and Jaffas, confirmed he was joining New Lambton. He will link with former Jaffas coach Shane Pryce and give the side much-needed experience.
"I just felt with where I'm at in my career, I just needed a change to keep me fresh," Piddington said.
"My three years at the Jaffas were super enjoyable, ultra-competitive and we won just about as much as we could.
"For me to continue to have that drive, the will and want to turn up, I just needed something fresh.
"There's no ill-feeling and I want to look back on my time at the Jaffas and have some really happy memories. I made some great mates there.
"I'm really proud of what I did there. I was in the NPL team of the year in every year there."
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