REDAN has moved to secure its long term leadership with Gary Learmonth agreeing to a two-year extension of his coaching term at City Oval.
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The Lions, who have been impressive in a 2-2 start to season, only going down narrowly against Sunbury and Ballarat, will look to continue their great record at Darley Park when they meet the Devils on Saturday.
Redan has won the past two clashes against the reigning premiers at Darley and are confident that they have the strike power to cause another boilover the weekend.
Learmonth said he was thrilled to be able to sign up with the Lions for the long term as the club looks to continue its build back to the top of the BFNL.
"It's a vote of confidence, I'm enjoying being a part of a great club, loving the coaching," he said.
"We've got enough great talent in the pipeline which is really encouraging.
"The club approached me and I thought once the season started and things had quietened down in a few areas we could discuss it, it went from there, it didn't take very long.
"We've got a strong group of coaches, we want to be able to keep the coaching group together, if we can get a few of our players back and few others return to the footy club, we'll be in a great position."
This weekend the Lions have a huge test at Darley, but after a hard-fought win over Sebastopol last weekend, the confidence is high.
"If you look at the stats each week, we usually finish a lot lower," he said. "We've had less stats, but we have had the more inside 50s in those games.
There will be at least one change to the Lions this week.
"We'll get Linc Barnes back in this week, but we'll lose Daniel Bond," he said. "I think for the North game we might get Lachie Bond back, but after our bye, we expect we'll have Joe Black in as well.
"This is going to be a great challenge, we've managed to beat them these last two years, so we're not going to go down fearing them, but we have to respect them. We're really looking forward to the opportunity to play against them and really seeing where we're at
"We need to bring consistent effort, we will have to watch their midfield. I don't know if we'll look at tags, but we need to be accountable.
"We didn't show enough respect to Lachie Cassidy last week or Sam Darley the week before, we'll see how it pans out.
"We're pleased the group is enjoying itself, we need to improve and I feel there's a lot of scope for us to improve."
