Skipton is conscious of how late it is in the year, but won't rush its appointment of a senior coach according to football director Chris Gawne.
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The Emus had built strongly under Greg Middleton in recent seasons and landed a breakthrough Central Highlands Football League finals appearance in 2019, but have been forced to find a new leader following his resignation from the role this month.
Gawne admitted it wasn't an ideal situation for the club to be in, but said there had been talks with candidates and expected the interview process to begin this week.
"It's not ideal. Absolutely. In ordinary circumstances, without COVID-19, it may not be quite as difficult," he said.
"But we've got a fantastic lot of hard workers at the club with good networks and we've been in touch with a few people. We've had some of our own people make recommendations.
"Our networks have worked really well and we've come up with a few people."
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Gawne hoped an appointment could be made by Christmas.
"It's going to be a fairly important appointment. Greg had set the club up well going into the future, we have a strong list and yes we'd like to do this as quickly as we can, but we also need to be mindful of the fact that we don't want to rush it.
"Having said that, I'm pretty confident we'll have it resolved before Christmas."
It was announced during mid-November that Middleton was stepping aside from the role due to family reasons. Before that, the Emus had put an offer to Middleton and he had asked the club for some assurances regarding the playing list if he was to re-sign for 2021.
After going winless in his first season at the helm in 2017 when even fielding two open-age teams was a battle, the non-playing coach made significant inroads the following year to claim six victories. Then in 2019, the Emus secured their first finals berth in the CHFL before bombing out in the elimination final against Hepburn.
Middleton was a premiership winner with Bungaree in 2014 and has also coached the league at senior representative level.
The Emus joined the CHFL back in 2011.