Football’s Faustian Deal

I got an interesting letter at work the other day from Michelle Den Dekker (nee Fielke) OAM. In case you’re in the dark about MDD OAM, she’s a retired South Australian netballer, who captained Australia from the late 80s to the early 90s. She was one of the first professional netballers and I remember her visiting my primary school when i was 6. She was getting in contact with me in her capacity as coach and sponsorship manager of Garville Netball Club looking for sponsors. One of her players was studying animation at uni and thought my studio was a good candidate for a player sponsor. In any case, it got me thinking about revenue models for sports clubs.

A lot of amateur sports clubs have sponsors and fundraisers, but it’s rarely enough to make it a semi-professional living. But what if there was a way Volleyball clubs could make enough money and to pay for players and coaches? I found a terrifying answer years ago, when as the treasurer at Henley Hawks I was pondering this very question and got a scary idea from a friend. My friend mentioned that his father’s billiards club had been struggling for money for years, so they added in 2 poker machines to their licensed bar, and ever since then the club’s financial situation had improved. The idea was both horrifying and compelling.

Pokies are terrible. They destroy lives and families. But the reality is, without them, a lot of pubs, clubs and bars would cease to exist. The State makes good tax revenue from them too, but I feel it is at too high a cost. The politicians and publicans will argue that a lot of this money goes back into the community to build hospitals, schools and services etc. But does it have to be at the expense of those with terrible addictions?

If we had the money the billiard’s club had coming through, we could have made it free for senior and junior players to play, decent payments for coaches, a full-time administrator and possibly even fund an AVL team. All exciting possibilities. But it was practically impossible – we had no licensed facility. And ideologically, it was just wrong. After all, we were the most community-based club in SA, and based in an area that wasn’t exactly posh. So I forgot about it and didn’t think about it again until now.

It’s a sad fact that isn’t publicised well, but without Pokies, we probably wouldn’t have an SANFL. Interest in the AFL had taken away a lot of the supporter base for state leagues, and a lot of clubs were struggling financially. One thing that really helped them was putting pokies in the bars and pubs they owned (something that helped just about every hotelier here when they passed the legislation letting them do it).

In 2006, Chartered Accountants Australia published a report detailing how the on and off-field fortunes of several SANFL clubs related to their choices to put pokies into their licensed facilities. The results were scary. Central Districts, which has won every premiership since 2000 except in 2002 & 2006 made the most revenue from gaming and was able to build on-field success from this and finished the year with a 300k+ operating surplus. Clubs that introduced pokies went from being in the red to being in the black. Neither Norwood or Sturt, clubs based in Adelaide’s wealthier Eastern Suburbs received revenues from pokies and continued to make bigger losses.

Central Districts is based in the outer Northern Suburbs, quite possibly the lowest socio-economic area in Adelaide. I’m sure Centrals domination in the SANFL is a great source of pride to the community, but one must wonder if it is built on one of the worst scourges that plagues the very same community. In business I’ve learned that organisations that take care of their communities are blessed with longevity. Those that damage their immediate environment will perish. It’s just nature’s way.

How sports clubs find money from the apathy of the communities that have abandoned them remains to be seen. Any ideas?

AVL – Cash Cow or Sacred Cow?

It was a pity when I read in December’s Spike Mag that the Men’s AVL competition didn’t go ahead last year. Furthermore, the meeting to talk about its future didn’t go ahead either. AVL wasn’t perfect. I always heard criticism about it. But I think everyone can agree that we need some sort of national competition at the senior level.

Women’s AVL this year had an interesting format – only one team per state. The principle is a bit like the State Seniors tournament they used to run. In fact, two of the teams in the women’s AVL were representative teams (QLD & WA).

The last State Seniors tournament was held in 1998. I just remember my coach, Rick telling me he saw it in Melbourne and had to travel back on the train after the Crows had beat the Bulldogs to make the grand final and there were a lot of drunk people on board. I think they used to run either or both AVL and State Seniors, but in the end they cut State Seniors in favour of a club-based format. Funny how things come full circle.

With my modest ability playing at a club that struggled to win a match, it’s no surprise I never played AVL. The closest I ever got was when my U21 state coach Mike Reu asked me (as a paying spectator) to do a line duty because someone hadn’t turned up.

I’m really digressing here because what I really wanted to write about is why a national league is important, and why it’s not doing what it ought to do.

Milk trickles down, not up

The elite competition of a sport should be the cash cow. A lightning rod that attracts the money that will trickle down and make the sport stronger. I was speaking to a couple of new volleyball parents recently and they were surprised how much it cost to put their kid through the sport. They were used to having their son play football and explained that a lot of the money made by the AFL trickles down to the grass roots (in grants I would presume) making participation much more affordable.

So I googled the AFL’s 2006 Annual Report to see for myself. It outlines a pretty ambitious plan for the next 5 years dubbed “Next Generation”. In short, they plan to spend just over a billion dollars on their operations over this time. In 2006, the AFL turned over $215M – one would presume most of that came from attendances, sponsorships, television rights and merchandising – all from the elite competitions. By the looks of the charts, about 70% of the revenue is spent on managing the AFL and disbursements to the clubs, so that leaves a margin of about 60M a year that this competition is creating! About half of that margin (15% of total expenditure) is invested in developing the game across the community. Imagine if our sport had 30M injected into it every year for development!

On the other hand, according to the AVF’s 2006-2007 report, they turned over 3.6M for the year. About 20% of that came from sponsorship, 15% from memberships and nearly half of that came from Government grants. It’s a very different picture

The sad fact is AVL and the State Leagues cost money. I don’t think anyone really makes any money out of them. It costs everyone (players, clubs, state associations etc) to be involved and you can’t point the finger at anyone making a lot of money out of this within our game. I wonder if from a sports administrator’s point of view life would be easier if we didn’t have these competitions at all? Why do we bother if it doesn’t make economic sense? Or maybe the real question is, how do we change a sacred cow into a cash cow?

Participation = Growth?

I read an article, or heard a commentator talk about Soccer in the US once. S/he said, if you had a look at what sport kids were playing most in a country, and thought it was indicative of what the most popular spectator sport there was, you’d think America’s national pastime was Soccer. But it’s not. It falls a distant god-knows-what behind Baseball, NFL, Basketball, Ice Hockey etc. We’ll see if Becks makes a difference there, but even Pele, Johann Cruijff, George Best and Franz Beckenbauer didn’t have much luck there. Hell, the league and teams they played for ceased to exist by 1985!

So we have a dilemma. Despite the unprecedented level of participation we’re experiencing in the sport in Australia, we still don’t have a professional national league. But that’s the wrong way to look at it, since we can’t expect an elite competition to grow from the ground up. It hasn’t worked so far. Maybe it’s the other way round. Financially, the money has to come from the top and trickle down, not from the bottom and push up.

Cracking the Footy Codes

It’s odd how the sports ahead of Volleyball in Australia, don’t have huge participation numbers that reflect their dominance. AFL is a sport played essentially in 3 states (with some obscure participation in the other states). Rugby League is pretty much NSW and QLD. Rugby Union has the people in those states that don’t follow Rugby League. Soccer and Basketball are the only sports up there that have participation across the board like Volleyball, but even they fall far behind the “Football Codes” and the money they generate.

So what have they got that we don’t? Honestly, I reckon it’s a great individual with vision, influence and gravitas. We talk about players and coaches who change their sport all the time. But there have been some great administrators who have completely transformed those sports too. Not to take away from the fine work I’m sure the people governing our sport here are doing, but the reality is they’re up against guys like Wayne Jackson, John O’Neill and David Gallop. Guys who have taken our football codes to the top (financially) and kept them there. And they’ve done it not by increasing participation in the sport, but in increasing the national interest.

John O’Neill

John O’Neill, has got to be the greatest sports administrator Australia has ever known as he has successfully transformed two sports; soccer and Rugby Union, creating sustainable professional leagues in both sports and getting their national teams to over-achieve on the world stage. Rugby Union transformed between the Wallabies’ World Cup wins in 1991 and 1999. In 1991, it was an amateur or semi-professional sport. Some of the Wallabies might have played in overseas leagues, but there were a fair number who supported themselves through other careers. By 1999, we had Murdoch’s Super 12 competition and a Wallabies side made up of full-time professional athletes based in Australia. Not bad considering it’s a sport that comes 2nd in a market of 2 states.

He then moved on to soccer, where a talented Socerros side had lousy luck in qualifying for the World Cup and the national league struggled. It would have been difficult and expensive to get him, but it helps having someone like Frank Lowy as your sport’s patron. Under O’Neill and Lowy, the Socceroos scored Guus Huddink and qualified for the world cup for the first time since 1974. We also got a new national competition that is a lot stronger than the last one and has a much higher profile. No longer is it an obscure sport with a predominantly ethnic stigma, but a sport embraced by the mainstream pushing itself to the status of the other football codes.

To get someone like John O’Neill to run volleyball here would truly transform the sport in this country. Someone who can get the partnerships right, corporate sponsorships and convince a media mogul why it’s worth putting volleyball on TV will help them get subscribers and advertising dollars. It’s hard since the people who can do that don’t exactly grow on trees.

I haven’t met the people who run our sport at the national level, but maybe that person is there now. Only time will tell. But we’ll know when AVL stops being a part of our game’s development and becomes part of the its profits. We might be waiting till the cows come home.

Nathan Roberts’ Blog

It’s great to hear from Nathan Roberts, one of our national indoor representatives playing professionally in Portugal for Castelo Da Maia. Nathan’s playing alongside fellow Aussies Panagopka and Aden Tutton, so his blog is definitely worth following.

It would seem that as a Brighton alumni, he has had his fair share of losing to Heathfield teams. I guess he was unlucky to be born roughly around the same time as Stuart Maycock, Sam Boehm, Marcus Jones, Phil Austin, Alex Fimeri etc. – when this rich vein of talent won Heathfield 4 Open Honours Boys titles in a row in retribution for losing to Brighton in 2001.

I first met Nathan in 2002 when we went away to AVJC. I was in my last year of U21s and Nathan had an awesome tournament playing U17s where he earned an all-star 6 selection and a silver medal. I remember there was a very dubious call in their gold medal match against the Vics. They lost the match point due to a rotation error! Fair enough, that’s not why they lost the game (the lost 3-1), but you just don’t call a team out of rotation on match point! It might be wrong, but I was taught in my level 1 refereeing course that on set point, the referee should “disappear” and let the players settle the game. In any case, I think it was within a year that he got an AIS scholarship.

We also shared a [cramped] room with Ian Scarborough, Craig Morrison, Matt Jones and Simon Horner (anyone else I missed out?) in 2004 when we both coached for Brighton at AVSC. I know the yr 9 team he coached got a lot out of having him as their assistant, since a couple of them played for my club and told me he gave them some great advice. Those kids led the recent Brighton Open Honours Boys team to finally win that gold medal that eluded Nathan.

So support our Aussies overseas and read his blog. Lets hope the boys make Beijing and Nathan gets picked, because that centre court in Brighton’s new gym isn’t going to name itself anytime soon! [N.B. The courts in Brighton's new gym are named after past students who have gone on to represent Australia in indoor volleyball at the Olympics. Tough criteria! So far they have the Bea Daly and Andy Earl courts].

Nathan Roberts 

It always suprised me the depth that the Heathfield School Teams had every year. Nearly every team plays as a ‘team’ whether or not they have a star studded lineup. I played 5 years for Brighton and lost 12 finals to Heathfield……and certainly not through lack of trying!! (5 state cups, 5 State Knockouts and 2 Open Honours GF’s) As much as I hate the fact I never won final for my school I always admired the depth and talent from the school and it’s a credit to the coaching and the setup they have implemented there.

Strange Bedfellows Part 3: Heathfield and Mt. Lofty

Camelot

[Image courtesy of Heathfield SIV Website, 2007]

Impressive isn’t it? It’s the new “Mt. Lofty Sports Centre.” A grand monument to volleyball if i ever saw one. To say that it’s gargantuan would be an understatement. I haven’t been there, but according to the map it’s got at least 6 indoor courts, 3 beach courts, rain catchment tanks and a rock-climbing wall. You could be forgiven for thinking that a nuclear bomb could go off in Adelaide and you could hole up there for the next 100 years with everything that you needed.

It’s a far cry from the gym they used to have that couldn’t even fit 3 full-sized courts (I often say that if anyone ever saw the old gym Heathfield had to use for years they would never whinge about inadequate resources!). Oddly enough the Gym was ready only a few months after Brighton’s new gym opened.

Heathfield and Mt. Lofty aren’t really affiliated in a conventional sense. A more metaphysically apt desciption would be to say that Mt. Lofty is Heathfield’s avatar presence in the State League world. They’re really two manifestations of the same being.

Mt. Lofty was started by Heathfield (and probably Eldo) in the mid 80s as a way for past and present Heathfield players to play State League. More or less, it’s run by the same people who run Heathfield, or used to. It’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. However, there have been some notable non-Heathfield Mt. Lofty players, like Mark Frisby-Smith, Kerri Pottharst, Aden Tutton, Luke Hunyadi and Tony Scott.

Heathfield, Quality, Quantity & the AVSC Grail

I think the rapid growth in volleyball participation at the younger age levels in recent years has come at the expense of quality in players and coaching below the elite levels. There’s still some plenty great volleyball out there, but we still don’t have enough coaches and resources to give every kid playing out all the attention they need to make them the best they can be. It’s a tough question of economics. Do you make your programme as big as your resources permit you to keep everything at the highest standard? It ultimately means saying no to some players and teams. Or do you make hay while the sun shines and let everyone in. You might end up stretched and the quality of your programme dininishes. Quality vs. Quantity. It comes down to choosing if you have a participation-driven culture or a success-driven culture.

Remarkably, Heathfield has managed to have a lot of Quality and Quantity in their programme. They always bring over the most or second most teams to Melbourne, and yet the standard of technique among their non-honours teams is quite high. Even their bad players are pretty skilled. I often feel that in a world of diminishing standards and decaying technique that Heathfield stands as one of the last bastions of classically good volleyball. Heathfield is Camelot with Eldo at the throne, amidst a world of savagery. If that School’s cup is the Holy Grail, then they’re the ones who have brought it back more times than anyone else.

Mt Lofty

All Heathfield’s teams compete as Mt Lofty teams in Junior League. They’re organised in groups similar to their AVSC teams, and each has a coach, who is usually a past Heathfield player. Heathfield easily has the best coaching staff around. They’re all ex-Heathfield players who have won Honours titles, played state volleyball, and possibly even for Australia.

It’s amazing how many Heathfield players want to come back and coach for them. They can only go to Melbourne if they can take trainings and Friday night junior league matches. That they can leave many overqualified coaches behind while just about every other school struggles for enough quality coaches for AVSC is a testament to their depth.

The fact that many of these coaches keep coming back, and have all been brought up on the same winning values reinforces the strong culture they have. Historically, Brighton had a bigger talent pool to draw from and more resources than Heathfield, but I reckon Heathfield often came up on top because of this culture.

Mt Lofty at the Senior level is often quite formidable. The core of their players are past and present Heathfield players, but they do attract a few others. I remember one year they fielded a women’s league team that had Anna and Renae Maycock, Jess Peacock, and Belinda Huff. You could have passed them off for the national team [this wouldn’t have been possible years ago when VTAW was still around and many of these players would have been in Canberra].

There’s also usually two Reserve Women’s teams, one made of alumni, and the other made up of some of the intermediate Heathfield girls (the younger ones play junior league, the open aged girls play league). In the three years I coached Women’s Reserves, I never beat either of these teams. [Then again, we lost to pretty much everyone else too].

Ascetic Beauty

Heathfield’s uniforms have never changed in the time I have been involved in Volleyball. The open teams might get a different strip, but that light blue jersey with the three thin horizontal maroon stripes and cloth numbers has remained ubiquitous with the school. They’re so old that they’ve gone from being in fashion, out of fashion, back into fashion, and now just iconic. It’s just become a powerful symbol of their sustained success while everything around them ebbs and flows. The day they change those tops will be the day they Jump the Shark, so I hope they always keep them.

I also found it funny how they take over the same banner every year. Willunga has a new one each year – i was quite impressed by our winning banner this year that featured the characters from Futurama playing beach volleyball. Heathfield’s banner had a simple image with the titles they had won written in the borders. They just bring the same one over again with the new titles added on. While I like pretty banners, I also like Heathfield’s sense of order and priority. Inevitably, they’ll need a new banner – they can’t fit that many more titles in the space that’s left.

Reclaiming the Grail

If you coach a school or club, you can never help but feel envious when you look at Heathfield and Mt. Lofty. They don’t seem to do much wrong.

Heathfield may have lost the school’s cup, but the last time that happened they just dominated for the next few years – winning OHB and OHG three years in a row. It was like the whole community of the Adelaide Hills – Eldo, his coaches and managers, the players, the parents etc were just outraged and decided to reclaim the cup in a way no one had done before.

This seems to happen every few years – Heathfield dominates, then one year they don’t do too well and lose the cup. Then they just come back with a vengeance for the next few years! So Brighton may have won the cup this year, but the Wrath of Heathfield should never be underestimated and it’ll be interesting to see what happens next year!

Mum and Dad – My first coaches

Hearing from Jamie Tester, a great coach and proud volleyball parent, and Chau Le, another Vietnamese ex-pat got me to thinking about my own parents, who it’s fair to say were the first people to have introduced me to Volleyball. Volleyball meant something different to them. It was all pretty idealistic and related to their activism against Communism in the 70s.

That’s my mum, Zung, and sister, Tam on the left (circa 1979), and me on the right (Circa 1983). Since as long as we can remember, we’ve been dragged out to watch Dad play volleyball, so there are no shortage of photos like these. It’s actually pretty hard to find any photos of my family between 1975 and 1985 that isn’t inside a gymnasium.

The old country

My Dad, Luu Nguyen grew up in Saigon (now “Ho Chi Ming City”), Vietnam in the 60s, where volleyball was a popular sport. There was an outdoor court nearby his house where most of the kids would play before and after school. Half of the surface was bitumen, and the other half was dirt. Luckily this incongruency applied to both sides of the court. The older kids would take the courts earlier in the day when it was cooler and the light was better, and the younger kids would just have to try their luck.

Even though it was a pretty well-off area (Dad’s father was a deputy minister in Diem’s government before the CIA backed Junta assassinated him and took over, and later got a job for Exxon Mobil), the setup and the kids all looked pretty shabby. Dad remembers a Black American G.I. stationed nearby who used to watch them play and gave them a brand new net one day.

Dad reckons they never rotated so when he was younger he always got stuck in the backcourt passing. Until he grew to 6′1 – unusually tall for a Vietnamese kid back in those days. [It's funny, there's this old Vietnamese proverb that says "blessed is the house whose son is taller than the father" - about progress i guess. We always joke that because i'm a bit shorter than dad, that our family is clearly in decline]. He also played for his high school team, and told me a story about how they played a final against a South Vietnamese Army team in a base full of soldiers. One of the kids in Dad’s team made the national team, and tried to defect to Thailand on a tour. We don’t know what became of him.

Both sides of my family were pretty well off and did what they could to get their kids out of the war. They were able to send most of their kids to France to study. Unfortunately my mum’s oldest brother got drafted and saw some nasty stuff. I think he might have even been involved in dropping Agent Orange out of the plane. He became an alcoholic and died of leukemia in 93. I only got to meet him once when i was 7, but by all accounts he was a very kind man. Mum and dad were both pretty smart so they skipped years in high school and got accepted into French Universities – as the youngest in their families they already had siblings established over there. Dad left in ‘69 after the Tet Offensive, and Mum left in ‘73 as Nixon and Whitlam were pulling out troops.

France

That’s dad in the daggy olive green trackpants. I’m guessing this was taken in the early 80s. Presumably his team is playing in some sort of weekend/holiday tournament in a track and field oval.

Dad was pretty smart and got into the most exclusive university in France, Ecole Polytechnique [in case being shorter than him wasn't enough to prove that our family was in decline, there's the academic proof too!]. Mum went to Sorbonne, the oldest university in France. Eventually they met, fell in love, got hitched and had Tam and me. During all this they got very active with the Vietnamese student associations.

[Mum circa 1975. Tam reckons this might have been taken the day Dad met Mum. Good thing she's in a gym and and an anti-communist. Otherwise they probably would never have met].

The Vietnamese student associations were divided into 2 groups – those that were communists, and those that were anti-communist. My folks belonged to the latter. It’s easy to forget, but France was historically a hotbed of communism. Many of the first generation of Chinese communist leaders like Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai were educated there, and Ho Chi Minh holed out there in exile. Both camps would work tirelessly to lure the Vietnamese student population over to their influence through their activities, with sport and social events being the big ones.

Dad spent a lot of time driving the many newspapers they had and the sports club, ASVN (Association Sportive VietNam), which included a lot of volleyball. I imagine the games they played against the communist students got pretty heated. To make things more interesting, 2 of mum’s brothers were communist sympathisers. For Dad, he loved volleyball, but a lot of his passion to play and coach was fueled by the idealism he had to fight the red influence. Mum played too. She was ok, but I suspect she did it more because dad spent so much time playing/coaching.

Dad also played div 2 or 3 in the French league. He reckons a scout found him playing at in his university’s gym and then picked him up the following week for training and the club gave him a uniform and a pair of new shoes. It was amateur, but clubs over there all seem to be well resourced. Dad also played for his university and told me about this five set match they played where he got his hand cut blocking against a guy wearing a ring and he had to go back to serve out the game.

The pictures above are the Vietnamese student games in Copenhagen. I guess they were pretty social and always held in a different European City. Like uni-games here i suppose. This photo is dated July 82, so literally a month after I was born. They must have either taken me with them, or left me with someone in Paris. Dad’s standing in the back of the queue in the photo on the left, and standing second from the right on the photo on the right. They look like they’re having a lot of fun.

Although they graduated, Mum and Dad stayed active with all this stuff right until we left for Australia. Tam and I were literally born into it all. They must have felt like they lost a big part of their lives when they moved here. I never really appreciated what their life was like, how much fun it was and how idealistic it all was, till i visited my family in France when i was 17 and spent a day with one of the guys my dad used to coach and he and his wife told me all the stories.

Down Under

In Australia, Mum and Dad got us into volleyball – Dad moreso, Mum just happened to be home more to practice with us in the backyard. She still kicks arse when we put a net up at the park. But i guess it was different. They were involved a bit with Australian branch of the Free Vietnam movement until family commitments became too much. But dad was still involved with anything remotely to do with improving the lives of the Vietnamese community here.

Dad played a bit here and there, mainly social stuff, work teams etc. He took a lot of interest in watching and reading about Australian volleyball. I remember he gave Tony Schofield his first engineering job at the Australian Submarine Corp after seeing on his CV that he had been the vice captain of the U16 state Volleyball Team. Dad also spent a lot of time teaching Tam and I how to play. Which took a lot of patience and repetition since we were both really uncoordinated.

[Our Thursday night social team - one of the last times Dad played any sort of volleyball circa 2001. Back Row: Dad, Victor Fule, Matt Sypek, Me . Front Row: Jono "Funky" Dragt, Tam & Alexei Fei]

Dad always had strong Confucian values and believed it was his calling to return to Vietnam and help rebuild it when the Communists were finally overthrown. It was like he waited years for this to happen. He confided to me a few years ago that he reached an epiphany that this was never going to happen, and that he had spent years of his life chasing this goal at the expense of his family life. It was around then that he stopped taking interest in my volleyball and stopped coming out to see my State League matches. It only occurred to me recently that he probably associated all this with a part of his life that he could finally move on from. When Dad didn’t care anymore, I didn’t feel like i had anything left to prove anymore and so I stopped playing.

I was born into this sport through unusual circumstances. For a long time it was inseparable from my family’s multi-generational struggle against tyranny. It was never just about a game with a ball. Playing was always about living up to the expectations of my Father, and to me represented one of the last things we clung to from our old life. Coaching was always different, and more about passing on what i learnt about living in the now to others. I think when I gave up playing and embraced coaching, I was able to move on in more ways than one.

Jamie Tester responding to Brighton Post

I was pleasantly surprised to get a comment from Jamie Tester, one of my favourite coaches out there. A great coach who I have yet to beat, and just one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. He used to run the programme at Hallett Cove High where he coached this fantastic Open Girls team that my Willunga Open Girls played several times and couldn’t beat. I think they ended up winning gold or silver at AVSC that year. They stick out in my memory because they were one of the few teams that always passed the first ball on their forearms making their reception and defense quite strong. Their defensive positioning was also very good making it hard to beat.

A couple of years ago he moved over to Brighton and coached their U16 Boys Honours team, which included Nic Rodger and Michael McEwen. I was Coaching Chris Little’s Willunga U16 boys, and we had to play them for an honours spot at State School’s cup. It was a very late game that went to 5 sets. We were both surprised it went that close. Originally we thought Brighton would just win easily, and given the time of the match (i think it started at 10 in the evening and we had both had long days), considered forfeiting it and giving both teams some rest. My boys had other ideas and it turned out to be a memorable game to say the least. We were up 2 sets to 1 and I thought it was going to be a time limit game and was hoping to run down the clock. Unfortunately I was wrong and they took control of the game by slowing it down. In the end i don’t think my boys had played a 5-set match before so Brighton had bit of an advantage over us playing a long match like that.

Jamie also has a couple of kids who are terrific players. His daughter Edie played in Brighton’s silver medal winning Open Honours Girls team last year at AVSC. His son Luke was one one the most versatile players I have seen play, and played in arguably the greatest Open Honours Boys team ever. But that is a story for another day!

* * *

Jamie Tester

G’day Huy

Your passion for this great game comes through the screen. I suspect you will coach again & again & again & AGAIN……because you’re addicted like so many of us. It is the culture, the people, the complete team aspect of great play (or scratchy play for that matter), the technical, the long term incremental development we implement & observe, the athleticism, skilling the less talented etc, etc, etc.

I’ve been engaged by your blogs recently. I congratulate you on presenting your perspective.

Could I respond with some of my own? Brighton SIV is now at a point where it seeks to be a feeder program. We have developed our own junior league club it’s true, we want as many kids playing junior league as possible, not all students seek the club association. We are also rapt that our highly talented students are seeking opportunities at other established league clubs – we encourage it. For example we would like to see a continuing spread of players to all clubs. This is probably not practical though. However we would like to see more boys join Henley, grow the supply to South, continue our connection to Lion & develop our own junior league teams. That’s a big agenda. That’s a big commitment to the game in this state. From a big picture perspective this commitment is much more important than medals for individual Holdfast Bay Junior teams. Our program has become huge we must spread the wealth of players. We believe this mentality will help the game to grow into the future. The notion of a single affiliation, for our program, is redundant and has been for a while now.

We also have educational & curriculum outcomes as our primary responsibility, we’re a school not a club. Our goal is to provide something that further connects students to their school. We seek to create a program whereby kids can’t wait to get to school because they are part of this unique thing called SIV. SIV is expected to enhance responsibility, behaviours & outcomes in all subject areas. This is a high expectation placed on us by the school & stakeholders. This responsibility comes well before tournament play, win/loss results, clubs & affiliations. Its philosophical stuff which gets back to things like student self esteem, academic application, civics & students taking their place in the world in a constructive, positive manner, it is much bigger than volleyball. This is no different to any other motivated, professional teacher or school. We just happen to use this great game as a conduit in seeking those outcomes.

I’ve picked up on comments that you have repeated a couple of times. You’ve repeated student comments which state that we just play matches & king court. That’s selling us short mate. If you ever asked kids “what they did at school today” invariably they respond with plutonic responses like “nothing” or “I can’t remember”. I feel your repetitive notions in your blog that we only play games &/or king court is the equivalent answer when asking SIV kids about what they are doing in class. We are committed in our approach, demanding on ourselves & our students. We continually analyse our operational paradigm. You don’t become Australian champions with a simplistic approach. You can’t beat Heathfield & Eldo with a simple approach. You don’t defeat a great program, run by a great coach & volleyball people enjoying an unprecedented era, playing king court.

You also seem to be implying credit for player development & success coming outside or in spite of our SIV program. That’s a bit rich! We seek to complement each other. Simply put there can be no doubt we are integral to the introduction & development of our students volleyball performance. We seek to complement & enhance their progress with any individuals, teams or clubs that have a similar passion to our own & yours.

It’s always good to speak, read & now reply on line with you Huy. Keep up the great work.

Cheers Jamie Tester

* * *

It’s great to have someone from Brighton’s programme add some comments to the post, and he makes some good points. Brighton is now a great feeder programme to our league clubs now, and having a spread means that more kids stay in the game. A lot of kids used to drop out of volleyball after High School because it was so competitive to get into their affiliated club’s teams. They would have to be really motivated to start over fresh with a new club. In a perfect world, players from all the big volleyball schools would play for different clubs, keeping more people in the game and spreading the talent around. I’ve seen some Heathfield players play for other clubs, like Fleur Holmes and Megan Avery at South, Kim Eldridge at Norwood, and Jason Potts at Austral, but we’re still losing out on a lot of their great players dropping out.

Jamie’s also right that Brighton SIV teaches a lot of important life skills off the court too, as any special programme would. I think Brighton’s culture has become a lot stronger in recent years. I felt it used to be a lot more participation focused in earlier years (which is where Willunga is at now – trying to get as many people involved), but is now more focused on also doing things right. Like Jamie says, you have to do a lot to beat Eldo and Heathfield for the # 1 spot.

Special Interest Programmes of any sort are a great idea. It’s a shame that we don’t have academically selective public schools here anymore, so anything that schools can offer for kids to apply themselves is great. SIV, as well as Brighton’s Special Interest Music programme (which I feel has become eclipsed by SIV and a bit forgotten) give kids a tangible goal of excellence, and put them through the steps to achieve it. The public schools with these programmes are the better ones in SA – Marryatville and their music programme, Glenunga with the International Baccalaureate, Norwood Morialta and their drama programme etc. They really set them apart from the rest. Though I still find volleyball to be a strange “conduit” for a programme since in spite of how much I enjoy it, it’s always felt like bit of an obscure activity. But it is a great sport that is very gender inclusive and allows for wide participation.

I should also apologise for my clumsy writing and point out that it’s been a while since I’ve been told that Brighton’s trainings were just modified games and King of the Court. I got given that feedback from players and parents round 2003, 2004, but as i said, I am not sure what they teach now. Some of those same players said that the lessons got a lot better when they reached year 11 and 12. It’s certainly hard for me to imagine those kids not getting good training there with the many qualified coaches they have there. In any case, Jamie is right in pointing out that you reach #1 by playing king of the court.

But I also have to point out that I think they have made improvements to the organisation of their AVSC campaign that i think have also helped them get better results. One big thing I’ve noticed is that they now have the boys teams and girls teams at separate hotels. I think ever since 2004 when they came back with a disappointing 2 medals (but still came second in the Cup), they’ve been looking at ways to improve their chances of success in everything they do. I was impressed with the way Brighton organised things the year I went with them, and it’s only improved since. I really appreciated it the following year when I coached for Willunga which didn’t have the same resources, and just how hard it was to be competitive without that support and planning. It’s something that deserves a post all on its own.

I don’t think that their success comes in spite of the great things they’ve done. They’ve obviously been changing and improving the way they do things in recent years. I think having Jeff Healey and Jamie Tester joining their staff in recent years has made a huge difference. But i still maintain that their playing group is so strong right now because there are more of them playing for clubs than i can remember. When players compete more at that level, they’re more competitive.

I can certainly say that if we had more players at Willunga playing club volleyball, we’d have better chances of winning the third honours spots in the older age levels. We haven’t gotten in the younger age groups yet either, but our chances there are better because at that age, the disparity in training and experience isn’t as pronounced. Once kids at other schools get to the age where they also play club and state, and our kids don’t, we’re left way behind.

In the past you might see fair few of their older Brighton teams with kids playing League and reserves, but now you see more creeping into the younger age teams, and that makes a big difference. Spike Magazine also reported in its AVSC edition that Brighton also had 35 representative players in their squad. That’s got to be a record! You can’t ignore the fact that they probably have the biggest amount of kids playing high standard volleyball in addition to playing for Brighton, and it’s a big reason for why they’re so strong right now.

But it works both ways. Because Brighton does a great job (those 35 kids wouldn’t have made state if they weren’t doing something right), clubs like ours are enjoying the benefits of having better players and stronger junior programmes too. This year, a couple of our coaches at the club were Brighton graduates too, so we can’t claim sole credit for these talented kids.

Heathfield has historically shown best practice in just about every area of playing, coaching, developing and organising school volleyball. It was like they were in front by a country mile, and I am still in awe and reverence for how they do things. They have managed to beat Brighton for the cup in some years when their programme was smaller and they took over less teams. They’ll always be the Camelot of volleyball in my books and have my bias for a long time! But I think we can all agree that the gap has definitely become a lot closer.

It’s going to come down to an interesting showdown at AVSC next year between Heathfield and Brighton. Brighton looks to keep a lot of its strong players and teams, but I’ve never been in the habit of betting against Heathfield. And Heathfield have come back with a vengeance the handful of times they’ve lost the cup. Brighton is strong, but the wrath of Heathfield should never be underestimated!

Strange Bedfellows Part 2: Brighton & her various suitors

[image courtesy of Spike Magazine, 2007. The School's Cup, OHB gold & OHG Silver. Their most successful year yet?]

For mutual survival and prosperity, clubs and school programmes often affiliate themselves with each other. Clubs get a supply of enthusiastic kids for their junior programmes, who will hopefully become their future stars. Schools get their kids more quality coaching and practice playing in tougher competitions.

Brighton SIV has gone through a number of affiliations over the years that I like to cheekily think of them as the Elizabeth Taylor of Volleyball schools. With so many kids in its programme, it was always hard for any one club to take them on and do a decent job. It really raises the question of how do you manage such a big programme and do it well.

Brighton’s coaching staff is now pretty strong, with Jamie Tester (ex-Hallet Cove High) and Jeff Healey (ex Edward John Eyre High) joining John Tiver and Sue Rodger as teachers at the school. It feels like many of the good, experienced coaches are becoming more concentrated in the same couple of schools here.

But, before I go on anymore, you’ll have to forgive me for being a bit self-indulgent as I talk about how close (or far) I came to going to Brighton Secondary School…

Indulgent Flashback

After a year of living in Adelaide, my parents bought a house and land package in Hallett Cove, just a few km’s south of Brighton. Brighton was a nice, posh, established suburb by the bay, whereas Hallet Cove was a new development area, home to many young couples and families starting out, and was full of those new brick-veneer houses that were becoming popular (a snooty friend of mine calls them “Bogan Boxes”).

Hallet Cove was a pretty new suburb, and didn’t have much in the way of schools. The local school was colloquially called “R to 10”. It went from reception to year 10, which really reflected the academic and socio-economic aspirations of the area at the time. My parents and all their siblings had gone to university. Even my grandfathers – during times when no one in Vietnam went to university – had university degrees. And so, despite not knowing where our futures would lead, all the same my parents wanted my sister and I to at least have the opportunity to go to university. Which meant going to a school that had year 12.

The closest school that fit this criteria was Brighton High (it had not yet merged with Mawson High to become Brighton Secondary School). Unfortunately, living out on the frontier, we weren’t in the zone. My sister, Tam managed to scrape in under their Special Music Programme, and I looked destined to do the same. I had been learning Violin since I was 7 and had bit of a chance. Tam also played in their early volleyball programme. No doubt dad made her play and I remember there being plenty of tears, since they weren’t very kind to her. Girls can be so cruel.

When Tam was 14 and I was 9, my parents decided they had to do better. Speculating on my violin skills to get into the special music programme of a school that had yr 12 just wasn’t good enough anymore. I must have been a really lousy Violinist! In any case, the decision was made to pack up and move to the posh Eastern suburbs where we’d be surrounded by, and in the zone of, the finest public schools in the state. Besides, my folks would at least make something off the property investment, and get a house in a nice area.

Hallet Cove did eventually get Yr 12, and now as Hallet Cove High competes at AVSC, and ironically I coach against their yr 11 and yr 12s all the time now. Brighton Secondary School got a Special Interest Volleyball Programme and ironically, I could have probably gotten into Brighton through that. After all, my dad’s commitment to making me a decent volleyballer far surpassed his interest in making a concert violinist!

* * *

Austral

One of Brighton’s early affiliated clubs was Austral. Historically, in a competition of ethnic based clubs and teams, Austral was the “Aussie” club. Austral was certainly affiliated with Austral in Tam’s time (Circa 1990, 1991) there and I remember her playing for Austral in junior league during winter. I think Brighton alumni and Olympian Bea Daly may have even played for Austral. I don’t know why it didn’t last, but eventually Brighton moved on to the Cheetahs.

Campbelltown Cheetahs

In a competition full of ethnic based clubs, Cheetahs became the first club that wasn’t exclusively ethnic in any way. You could come from anywhere and play for them. To me they represented great pluralistic and multicultural ideals. They were also in most of the Volleyball stories my dad told me when I was young. Sue Dansie and Steve Tutton coached them at one stage. Greats like Tania Gooley, Karola Englert, Bruce Surman, Leroy Morrison, Trish Virag, Denise Kloeden, Ian Scarborough etc all played for them. Tam ended up playing for them when we moved east, and since I was 10 I wanted so desperately to play for them. [N.B. 6/1/08 I have since been corrected that Karola Laventure nee Englert never played for Cheetahs, and actually played for South]

But by the mid 90s the Cheetahs were in trouble. They had a strong women’s team, but had no men’s team. They had to fold. But my coach Rick Daniels had an idea. At the time he was also president of the Henley Hawks, an ex-state league team that now had a very competitive div 1 men’s team. He suggested merging the two clubs to compete as the Cheetahs. If the experiment was successful they’d compete as the Henley Hawks from the year after.

Needless to say they moved West in 1997/1998 and went through many trying years before finally coming good recently. During this time, Cheetahs/Hawks affiliated itself with Brighton, but it didn’t go well. They just didn’t have the infrastructure to support 10+ junior teams. Nobody does really. We had some great Brighton players playing for us like Andy Earl and Scott Farmer, but still really struggled. We weren’t able to do a good job for Brighton, and I think Rick didn’t like the attitude of many of their players. Then again, there were plenty of people he didn’t get along with that had nothing to do with Brighton. Inevitably, the relationship didn’t last long.

By the time I joined up with Hawks in 2001, we had started our juniors programme again from scratch with just two scrappy teams; a boys team and a girls team from Torrensville Primary out in the western suburbs. These kids included Sivlang Chao, Liam Finn, Chris McHugh, Lewis Dalby and Ben Leaver and would go on to become good players and contributors to our club. Back then we just worried about getting 6 players on the court every Friday night. Meanwhile, Brighton affiliated itself with USC Lion. Many of their players we had coached moved over. Andy Earl joined Lion but hardly played a game for them as he was almost immediately offered a VTAM scholarship.

USC Lion

USC Lion is one of the oldest, if not THE oldest club in State League. USC either stands for Ukrainian Social Club, or Ukrainian Sports Club. I’ve heard both versions. There’s a USC Lion in Melbourne too, but I’m not sure if they’re necessarily the same acronyms.

Lion picked up where we left off. But I’m not sure it worked out that much better. Certainly a lot of the older Brighton students made it into the USC League and Reserves teams and got a lot out of it. Since their affiliation, there has always been a USC Lion reserve women’s team comprised of many girls in their Open team. They used to be coached by Sue Rodger, who played for Lion and taught at Brighton, but I’m not so sure if she’s still coaching that team.

At the Junior League level, they had the same problem as us in just not being able to find enough coaches for that volume of teams. Teams were organised in friendship groups and many didn’t have coaches. You’d see a couple of Lion players out there on a couple of teams, but there were still a lot that didn’t have coaches. Some were coached/managed by a parent who didn’t know that much and certainly only took up the unenviable responsibility reluctantly. Others were coached by an older sibling of one of the players. Sometimes the kids just decided what to do. It could be real Lord of the Flies sort of stuff.

I thought the funniest thing about the Brighton/Lion affiliation was the fact that most of the kids in the younger teams didn’t even know the club’s NAME! They would often come out of the huddle yelling out “USC Lions”, not realising that Lion was singular, not plural.

I coached against a lot of these teams, and even though I knew many of them were better than us on paper, and trained more in the week than we did, I always knew we had an advantage in that they didn’t have a coach to guide them.

As the new rules came in that you didn’t need to compete under a club banner in Junior League, like Rostrevor, Brighton struck out on its own.

South Adelaide

During the later years of Lion’s affiliation with Brighton, a few notable Brighton players opted to play for South Adelaide. They included Meaghan Jones, Craig Morrison, Dan and Jack Flemming, Luke Tester and Scott Roberts. I don’t know why for certain they chose this. Probably a combination of it being quite hard to get into Lion’s league teams, and the influence of their coaches at SASI, who had a lot of influence over these kids and coached at South.

Holdfast Bay

For the younger players in years 8-10, Brighton’s own Holdfast Bay club is by far the best solution they’ve had yet. It’s a bit similar to what Heathfield did by creating Mt. Lofty. Quite a few teams have an older SIV student as a coach, or studesnts who have since graduated. Some players I’ve coached like Liam Finn, Troy Welfare and Evan LeClerq have coached Holdfast teams. Sometimes even against me! Hopefully many of these coaches will stick around, and if they do, the programme will only get stronger,

The kids can choose other clubs if they want to, and Brighton kids now play for Henley, South Adelaide and Lion without any of them having any official affiliations with Brighton anymore. In a way, Brighton at AVSC has become a representative team in itself, with kids from all these clubs being picked to represent their school a few times each year. In all honesty, I reckon this is why Brighton won so many medals this year whereas three years ago they won only 2. There are probably more Brighton kids playing for clubs (between Lion, South and Henley) as there ever has been. And not just in the older age groups but right down, but right down to their youngest teams.

Brighton’s programme is also now bolstered by its new gym. Like the Heathfield one, it was talked about for years and went through a lot of nonsense with bureaucrats before coming to fruition. It’s got three courts with taraflex floors, video cameras that capture replays you can see on the flatscreen monitors and, most importantly, no basketball or badminton court markings! The two outside courts are named after Bea Daly and Andy Earl, alumni who represented Australia at the Olympics in indoor volleyball. Their autographed jerseys hang proudly in frames in the lobby. I hope for the sake of naming the third court sometime soon that Australia qualifies for Beijing and Nathan Roberts makes the team!

Henley. Again.

If Brighton is the Elizabeth Taylor of Volleyball schools, then Henley Hawks is certainly the Richard Burton of Volleyball Clubs. In a roundabout way it’s all come back, although there’s nothing official and it’s a bit like living in sin.

I guess it started [again] when 5 of our Torrensville juniors decided to go to Brighton. They loved playing volleyball, and so why not go to a high school where you could play heaps of it? They were all out of zone, but got in quite easily. I worked a lot with these guys and was paranoid they’d all go over to Lion, which eventually most of them did. They all fell under the influence of playing with their new friends – who could blame them – and joined Lion. Only 1 player out of that 5, Liam Finn, stayed with us. Kind of hard not to, since his Dad ran the Hawks junior programme!

There was a clear difference between the young Brighton kids that played for us and the ones that didn’t because of the extra practice. In junior League, we’d always beat the Brighton teams, even though a lot of our teams had kids that didn’t get as much practice. Some of the kids at Brighton reckoned even though they had volleyball lessons, most of the time they just played modified games. On the other hand, Hawks only had a 1-hour training session a week, but we did a lot of repetition and wash drills, and the training groups were always much smaller.

We started getting kids from Brighton who weren’t happy with the service from Lion and wanted to get better with us. We also got kids at Brighton who weren’t in the programme and wanted to train up with us so they could get in. We ended up becoming “volleyball tutors” in a way.

One of the things I like most about Henley’s junior programme is that it’s community based and open to everyone and anyone. The teams are mixed up, so if you’re from Brighton, you play with people from other schools. They mix the teams up every year, so even though there are some familiar people, you get to play with different kids each season. It builds a great club spirit and prevents cliques from forming. It seams any group of Hawks players are happy to play on the same team.

Since from the start we always had teams with primary school aged kids, so it wasn’t long that households in and out of Brighton’s zone, started sending their kids to the club so they could be trained up to get into Brighton’s SIV programme. A lot of them make it and there’s now a strong Henley constituency in Brighton’s programme. I counted at least 20 at AVSC this year amongst its medal winning teams – many in their honours teams. Whether we’re better coaches, or we attract better athletes, or they’ve just had more practice, Henley players are now very important to many of Brighton’s successful teams.

New Brighton kids come to our club every year and Brighton gets skilled players from us every year. At not always at the entry level. Some kids like playing so much that after a few years of high school they choose to move over where there’s a programme. There’s no official affiliation, but it’s mutually advantageous. After all, Richard Burton was always one of Elizabeth Taylor’s better husbands.

Strange Bedfellows Part 1: schools and their affiliated clubs

When I think about the curious relationships between clubs and their affiliated schools, I think about this painting:

It’s a painting of Frankish King, Clovis I being baptised into Roman Christianity circa 493 AD. Clovis I was a Merovigian king who united the Franks under one kingdom that would become modern France. At this time the Roman Catholic Church was in a weak position that had been deteriorating since the Fall of Rome. Having a secular champion like Clovis I and a country like France, would not only ensure its survival but establish its dominant power and influence over Western Europe.

And so a deal was done, and the heathens of Gaul were all converted to Roman Christianity. It was the start of that unusual (and often destructive) marriage between church and state that came to rule medieval society for the next few hundred years. Thank heavens a bunch of freemasons founded the USA and decided it was a good idea to separate these institutions for good!

* * *

For mutual survival and prosperity, clubs and school programmes often forge similar relationships. Clubs get a supply of enthusiastic kids for their junior programmes, who will hopefully become their future stars. Schools get their kids more quality coaching and experience playing in tougher competitions.

In SA there’s also that other little regulation that requires players to be registered to a club to be eligible for selection in the state teams. Clubs also can’t compete in state league without both men’s and women’s teams and boys and girls junior teams. And it used to be the case that to compete in junior league, a team had to belong to one of the clubs. Behind nearly every great AVSC school from SA stands a great club. And Vice versa. They really need each other.

Some famous couples

I can’t be 100% sure of the status of all these affiliations, but at some point in SA we had:

• Unley High School & Austral Volleyball Club
• Brighton Secondary School & Holdfast Bay Volleyball Club (Previous spouses include Austral, Campbelltown Cheetahs/Henley Hawks & USC Lion. You could almost call Brighton the “Elizabeth Taylor” of Volleyball Schools)
• Heathfield High School and Mt Lofty Volleyball Club
• Rostrevor College & Norwood Volleyball Club (Since separated)
• Aberfoyle Park & South Adelaide Volleyball Club

According to the Melbourne Falcons website, they have affilations with:

• Billanook College
• Upwey High School
• Luther College
• Kew High School
• Eltham High School

[a polyamorous relationship it would seem from our more cosmopolitan neighbours] No bloody wonder they’re all so strong!

I’m also guessing Wonthaggi has some sort of affiliation with Heidelberg. Or at least used to. I’m not 100% sure, but I’m sure Devo will correct me if I’m wrong!

Clubs are from Mars, Schools are from Venus

How do these relationships function well? It’s simple really. Clubs need the schools to provide them with their best players, and schools need clubs to support them in their campaigns, namely AVSC. Like any other relationship, this can be hard work, and things won’t work out if either side doesn’t live up to it’s end of the bargain.

Star Couples Part 1: Rostrevor College and Norwood Bears

By the time I was old enough to start playing junior volleyball (circa 1997), my local club Campbelltown Cheetahs had packed up and moved to the other side of the city and become Henley Hawks. North Adelaide had moved to Norwood to access a junior base in the suburbs and renamed themselves Norwood bears.

Norwood’s affiliated school was Rostrevor College. It was a golden age for both; Rostrevor had the brilliant Adam Maskell and a group of talented kids that would all make the state sides and go on to be Junior and Intermediate Honours campions and win silver medals in U17s and Open Honours [they lost OHB to possibly the greatest school’s cup team ever fielded]. Norwood was on the way up too. They had Andy Hunter, Jonathan Hague and Jason Sydoryn. Mark Lebedew would join them soon to spearhead their AVL aspirations as coach.

With Norwood investing so much into Rostrevor, it was hard for me to get good opportunities to play. I wasn’t very good to begin with, but there were certainly Rostrevor players at a similar standard getting far better opportunities. So by the time I was 18, I packed up and moved to the club I idolised as a child – the Cheetahs, who by this time were the Henley Hawks. Despite all this, I really liked those guys from Rostrevor. I’m still quite close to a couple of them to this day. But the truth remains, affiliations between clubs and schools can really marginalise junior players who do “fit in”. In my case, I couldn’t get into the team I wanted. In some case, you can’t even get into the programme.

As the years went on, the relationship didn’t seem to be as strong. Relationships are hard work and you both have to put in. Norwood did get some of Rostrevor’s best playing for them – Adam Maskell, Travis Moran, Nik West, Tom West, Matt Hunt, Mark Winter, Victor Fule, Julian Roeger etc. Most of them weren’t long term since they either made the national team or lost interest. There were many teriffic Rostrevor players that never played for Norwood at all at the State League level.

Norwood didn’t seem to be giving Rostrevor enough support. Their junior league teams were more and less just Rostrevor teams, coached by Glen Urbani or Rostrevor alumni. Any affiliation these coaches had with Norwood were purely coincidental. I never saw Norwood provide coaches for their AVSC teams (except the guys that were from Rostrevor). Rostrevor were pretty much just playing under the Norwood name so they could compete in Junior League.

At this point, if you lived in the eastern suburbs and didn’t go to Rostrevor, there was no way you could play junior league for them. There would have been seasons where Norwood didn’t field a junior girls team either. They would have technically been ineligible to stay in State league. But with only 6 clubs left in SA, it probably wasn’t a good idea to kick them out.

Then, a couple of years ago, VSA made it possible for schools to enter teams in junior league without an affiliated club. Rostrevor, with its own very capable coaching resources struck out on its own, leaving Norwood without any juniors.

To its credit, Norwood started its junior programme again from scratch. The kids come from schools in the local area like Marryatville Primary, and maybe Marryatville High. I think a lot of this can be credited to a bunch of Renmark ex-pats who moved to Adelaide and joined Norwood. They have taken the club in exciting new directions. They’re in a very similar position to where Hawks was when I started coaching there years ago. The kids are young and many still in primary school. It’ll take years for them to bear fruit, but lets be hopeful.

Norwood still has Tom West playing for them. Nik West plays sometimes when he’s not overseas playing for European clubs. Adam Maskell and Travis Moran aren’t exclusively involved with Norwood anymore, if they are at all. Rostrevor’s latest stars Harrison Peacock and Sam White have chosen to play for Mt. Lofty. All in all, both Norwood and Rostrevor have moved on and it’s worked out ok.

Since we all love reading about star couples, we’ll take a look at another one from SA tomorrow.