The Coon Dog
10-05-2008, 05:54 AM
A club with no kids: it's a nightmare (http://www.realfooty.com.au/news/news/a-club-with-no-kids-its-a-nightmare/2008/05/09/1210131268467.html)
http://img398.imageshack.us/img398/4279/49552596fg2.jpg
BARELY five kilometres from the AFL's Docklands headquarters, and close enough to Whitten Oval to hear the renovators at work, is football's greatest nightmare: the club with no kids.
Last year, West Footscray fielded teams in under-10s, 12s, 14s, 16s and 18s, the latter three reaching the grand final. At the presentation night in August, not one more body could have been squeezed into the Roosters' heaving clubrooms.
When season 2008 began, they were down to just two teams, the under-12s and 18s. It is the first time in the 82 years since the club was formed as Tottenham Imperials that it has been unable to field under-14s and 16s. And no one knows why. "There's probably three or four gone to other clubs, but the rest have just completely disappeared," says president Robert McGhie, who played juniors at West Footscray in the 1960s before embarking on a 13-year, dual-premiership career in the VFL with Footscray, Richmond and South Melbourne.
"And the worst part about it is, you're never going to get them back."
West Footscray is a club proud of its history, equally so of its diverse make-up — vice-president Geoff Mason says it boasts players from "18 or 19 nationalities". It is financial again after a five-year drive to erase a $38,000 debt and, according to Western Region Football League chief executive John Batty, well run.
"The fact they got back into division one (after the seniors and reserves won premierships last year) indicates that," Batty said.
Mason, who has been with the club since the under-16s in 1966, has overseen the juniors for the past eight years. He has scratched his head for answers, and didn't see the exodus of youth coming.
Batty says that West Footscray's case is an anomaly, citing the boom in nearby Yarraville.
"You're always going to have changing patterns, changes in population and growth trends. We might lose a few teams from West Footscray, but we'll have more teams out in Tarneit, Point Cook or Hoppers Crossing."
Maribyrnong deputy mayor Catherine Cumming, who lives near the club's Market Street ground, stumbled on the problem when she took her son along looking for a game in the under-10s.
"It's kind of crazy that we've got three scout halls, three primary schools, and we can't field a footy team. And yet in Yarraville they're bursting at the seams. Why can't I take my son to the local club at the end of the street?"
McGhie thinks a combination of "an older area" and the concentration of clubs within a five-kilometre radius hasn't helped, and while there are "some young people coming back and buying the California bungalows and renovating", it will be the best part of a decade before their children graduate from Auskick, which the club introduced this season.
"We've gotta crawl before we can walk again, I suppose," McGhie says. "We want to fill the seniors with home-grown kids, but you just don't know where they're going to come from."
All insist the great "enemy" of Australian Rules, soccer, is not a factor here, but Mason envies the kick-along soccer clubs receive compared with those in "established" sports. "Soccer seems to get the coin."
Mason says the club has been "waiting 15 years for another set of lights" at Shorten Reserve, where it is hoped a patchwork of couch grass slabs and runners will transform the surface of the dusty former bluestone quarry. The club thinks its player shortage was not helped by a drought-inspired council edict banning training at the venue until April 1, which meant none of the usual "drive-by" recruits materialised.
Mick Daniher, AFL Victoria's manager of development and planning, says the drop-off is at odds with a big increase in team numbers across the state between 2004-06. "Overall, interest in kids wanting to play the game is outstripping access to facilities," he says. "It's not that there's a lack of interest in Footscray, it might just be that the demographic has changed, and we have to be smarter in the way we attack those demographics."
Daniher says a multi-cultural football program, introduced in 2006, is crucial to such areas, although West Footscray points to the melting pot of cultures wearing its red and white jumper as evidence it is anything but exclusive. Sensitive to Muslim diets, Mason is practised in removing bacon from the chicken burgers he serves after training on Thursday nights.
"But it's so important that the kids actually get out, are able to walk to their local football field, understand teamwork and get to know their neighbourhood friends," Cumming says. "That's how communities are built."
http://img398.imageshack.us/img398/4279/49552596fg2.jpg
BARELY five kilometres from the AFL's Docklands headquarters, and close enough to Whitten Oval to hear the renovators at work, is football's greatest nightmare: the club with no kids.
Last year, West Footscray fielded teams in under-10s, 12s, 14s, 16s and 18s, the latter three reaching the grand final. At the presentation night in August, not one more body could have been squeezed into the Roosters' heaving clubrooms.
When season 2008 began, they were down to just two teams, the under-12s and 18s. It is the first time in the 82 years since the club was formed as Tottenham Imperials that it has been unable to field under-14s and 16s. And no one knows why. "There's probably three or four gone to other clubs, but the rest have just completely disappeared," says president Robert McGhie, who played juniors at West Footscray in the 1960s before embarking on a 13-year, dual-premiership career in the VFL with Footscray, Richmond and South Melbourne.
"And the worst part about it is, you're never going to get them back."
West Footscray is a club proud of its history, equally so of its diverse make-up — vice-president Geoff Mason says it boasts players from "18 or 19 nationalities". It is financial again after a five-year drive to erase a $38,000 debt and, according to Western Region Football League chief executive John Batty, well run.
"The fact they got back into division one (after the seniors and reserves won premierships last year) indicates that," Batty said.
Mason, who has been with the club since the under-16s in 1966, has overseen the juniors for the past eight years. He has scratched his head for answers, and didn't see the exodus of youth coming.
Batty says that West Footscray's case is an anomaly, citing the boom in nearby Yarraville.
"You're always going to have changing patterns, changes in population and growth trends. We might lose a few teams from West Footscray, but we'll have more teams out in Tarneit, Point Cook or Hoppers Crossing."
Maribyrnong deputy mayor Catherine Cumming, who lives near the club's Market Street ground, stumbled on the problem when she took her son along looking for a game in the under-10s.
"It's kind of crazy that we've got three scout halls, three primary schools, and we can't field a footy team. And yet in Yarraville they're bursting at the seams. Why can't I take my son to the local club at the end of the street?"
McGhie thinks a combination of "an older area" and the concentration of clubs within a five-kilometre radius hasn't helped, and while there are "some young people coming back and buying the California bungalows and renovating", it will be the best part of a decade before their children graduate from Auskick, which the club introduced this season.
"We've gotta crawl before we can walk again, I suppose," McGhie says. "We want to fill the seniors with home-grown kids, but you just don't know where they're going to come from."
All insist the great "enemy" of Australian Rules, soccer, is not a factor here, but Mason envies the kick-along soccer clubs receive compared with those in "established" sports. "Soccer seems to get the coin."
Mason says the club has been "waiting 15 years for another set of lights" at Shorten Reserve, where it is hoped a patchwork of couch grass slabs and runners will transform the surface of the dusty former bluestone quarry. The club thinks its player shortage was not helped by a drought-inspired council edict banning training at the venue until April 1, which meant none of the usual "drive-by" recruits materialised.
Mick Daniher, AFL Victoria's manager of development and planning, says the drop-off is at odds with a big increase in team numbers across the state between 2004-06. "Overall, interest in kids wanting to play the game is outstripping access to facilities," he says. "It's not that there's a lack of interest in Footscray, it might just be that the demographic has changed, and we have to be smarter in the way we attack those demographics."
Daniher says a multi-cultural football program, introduced in 2006, is crucial to such areas, although West Footscray points to the melting pot of cultures wearing its red and white jumper as evidence it is anything but exclusive. Sensitive to Muslim diets, Mason is practised in removing bacon from the chicken burgers he serves after training on Thursday nights.
"But it's so important that the kids actually get out, are able to walk to their local football field, understand teamwork and get to know their neighbourhood friends," Cumming says. "That's how communities are built."