You are here: Home » News & Events » President's Report

President's Report

Added: 23 September 2007

The St Ives JAFL club continues to build on the exceptional work of many volunteers over many years with 2007 being an outstanding year for the club.

Some of the highlights of 2007:

Football

Auskick - This program was a tremendous success with great feedback from all involved. On most Sundays the little footy players had 90 minutes to improve their skills and have fun with their modified games. Our Auskick program is critical to the success of our future teams and the club will continue to give this program great focus. A wonderful effort by Richard Piech, head coach Peter van Dongen and the entire Auskick support team. A full review on Auskick is available in the Auskick report.

Grade Teams - The St Ives Club fielded a record 14 teams with an amazing 9 teams in the junior competitions. The club was awarded the best junior program for our efforts in focusing on skills development and ensuring equal participation for all players in our u9-u12 teams. With three teams in u9's and u10's and two teams in u11's it was always going to be difficult to juggle player numbers and to make sure we would always be competitive. Special mention must go to all coaches and managers for managing this situation so well. All of our players had plenty of game time and from all reports had a very enjoyable season. Our u10 Bolton team and our u12 team both made the preliminary final and both were very close to making the big one.

We were very competitive with our youth teams with the u13s and u16s also going down in very close preliminary finals. The u14's were just one win away from making the semi finals and our u15's went all the way.

For the first time in many years we were able to put two teams on the park in the u13s. This meant a grading process with our teams playing in separate divisions. Again, our coaches did a wonderful job in ensuring a fair process for all players. We saw many boys start off in division 2 but with hard training and great determination were able to make the division 1 team by year end.

The u15s had a super year going throughout the season undefeated. Big congratulations to players, coaches and all involved. There are many talented players in this team and we look forward to watching them on the bigger stages in the future.

We wish our u16s every success as they move on to senior football.

Many thanks must go to all of the volunteers who put so much effort into our teams and our players- coaches, assistant coaches, managers, ground managers, goal umpires, boundary umpires. We really do appreciate your time and effort.

Greg Simmons was recognized for his many years of contribution to our club being awarded the Geoff Roberts Memorial Clubman award. Greg has been involved for many years as team manager and club sponsor and was a fitting recipient of this award. The loss of Geoff in the 2007 year was a very sad and difficult time but he will always be remembered at St Ives football club as a great man, a great father and a great coach.

Representative Players ­ Not only did we have many players experience the thrill of finals football, we also had many boys who played representative football. Congratulations to all these players and these boys are recognized later in this annual report.

Club Umpires ­ We were very lucky to yet again have had a great band of young players willing to participate in our game from this invaluable and different perspective. To our junior umpires, we hope the experience was beneficial to you and we thank you very much for your contribution in 2007. Further details of our umpires can be found in the Umpire Co-ordinator's Report.

Sponsors

Many thanks go to our sponsors who support the club financially. Century 21 was once more our major sponsor and we are very appreciative of the support from Craig Marshall. Craig's Butchery at West Pymble, O'Loughlin's Pharmacy at St Ives and club stalwart Greg Simmons Company Acuere were again sponsors of the club. We also had two new sponsors in Valvoline and Alpha Advantage and many thanks to their support of our club. I would encourage you to do business with our sponsors whenever possible. Make sure you tell them you are from St Ives JAFL.

Administration and Finance

Our club is very fortunate to have a small but enthusiastic group of people who carried out many roles in outstanding fashion in 2007. These roles included canteen, social, registration, finance, property, council liaison, coach's coordinator, umpires coordinator, sponsorship. Many thanks are due to the committee of Martin Rodgers, Terry Southwell, Tony Amasi, Andrea Lawrence, Peter Jenner, Diane Morris, Richard Piech, Matthew Walton, Doone Richmond and Peter Apin.

The 2007 year was a very good financial result and we continue to be in a strong financial position. After spending $94,000 on the new lights we still have $56,000 in retained funds. Between the canteen and the social function we raised over $30,000 for the club in 2007.

Many thanks go to Diane Morris and her many helpers for this outstanding result in the canteen with $15k profit. And Lara Thomas, Sally Biles, Diane Morris and Andrea Lawrence must be congratulated on a wonderful social night which also raised $15k for the club.

Details of the various functions can be found in the portfolio reports.

Andrea Lawrence and Tony Amasi were awarded the Presidents Award for their outstanding contribution to the club. Tony has put in a big effort in the role of coaching co-ordinator. In regards to Andrea, the club would just not function without her and she continues to go beyond the call of duty.

The future - 2008 and beyond.

The St Ives club is in a strong position and we have some short and long term goals for our organisation.

We continue to work with the council and with the NSWAFL to improve facilities at Acron Oval. With the installation of the new lights we now have a safe environment for training and can now play competition games on the oval. We are still focused on improving the playing surface as well as upgrading the clubhouse facilities.

In regards to on the field we need to continue to grow our numbers. A successful club will be those who have 80-100 Auskickers, 3 teams in u9-u11 grades, 2 teams in u12-u16 grades. This has to be the long term goal of all clubs. Once we have fully divisionalised competitions from u12 ­ u16 with the majority of clubs providing a team in both divisions the code in Sydney will start to flourish. The game must provide a very strong competition in division 1 to attract the best athletes. At the same time the code must also provide for those boys who are not so talented or physically developed but who still want to play and enjoy AFL football.

With football now confirmed again to be played on Sundays in 2008, there are no longer clashes with Saturday school sport or Saturday junior soccer. Recruitment is our number one priority between now and Christmas. We need assistance from as many club supporters as possible. We need to spread the word in both public and private schools. We need our players to be encouraging their mates to join our club.

Finally, the club is in very good shape ­ we are in need of more volunteers and with a little help from many we will be a better club in the future.

Allan Brackin
0409 811 814
02 9989 8387

Major Sponsor - Century 21 - we have the power to move