By Kerri-Anne Mesner
BRIMBANK City Council is receiving requests from soccer clubs outside the municipality wanting to relocate to the area as well as pleas from local clubs asking for upgrades to their infrastructure
Since the council’s last ordinary meeting in November, council has received another request from a soccer club.
At the last ordinary council meeting on 27 November, Cr Costas Socratous remarked on the number of requests the council had received in recent months from soccer clubs. He said the council was being inundated with such requests as it seemed there was a new one every meeting.
A request to Brimbank City Council’s sports and recreation department about the total number of requests from soccer clubs — including the number for clubs currently located outside the municipality — in the past year had not been answered by the time Star went to print.
The Buffalo Club, based in the Moonee Valley municipality but with a majority of its members living in Brimbank, asked for the council at its November meeting for assistance to relocate to Brimbank to be closer to its members’ homes.
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Cr Anthony Abate said the majority of members of the Buffalo club were East Timorese who lived in the Sunshine area.
“Three quarters of the club members live in Brimbank,” he said. “The rest are in the process of moving into Brimbank.”
Cr Margaret Giudice told Star last week council was waiting for officers to develop a sports and recreation policy so the council could be open and transparent with the community about which facilities would be available to which groups.
There are 17 soccer clubs playing and training in the Brimbank municipality, with Southern George Cross Football Club training and playing at two separate locations — one in Brimbank and one in Maribyrnong municipality.
The club has asked the council to help it relocate within the municipality as the growing number of memberships had led the club to split between two locations.
Club president David Pisani said the club, at the time of the meeting, had been discussing the issue with the council for about 18 months.
Brimbank City Soccer Club (BSCS) asked the council in October to consider allowing the 100-plus members, of which 67 are juniors, to move to Balmoral Park, Derrimut, for the 2008 season.
The club has been playing at Arthur Beachley Reserve in Sunshine but because of the lack of lighting at the home reserve, it conducted training sessions at the Lloyd Reserve in St Albans.
In May, the council rejected a request from the Western Suburbs Soccer Club to build a spectator rise along one side of its playing field after residents who back onto the Ralph St soccer field objected to the planned 0.6 metre mound on the grounds of privacy.
However, the councillors agreed to a compromise which would allow the club to level off the ground to ensure all spectators could stand at the base height of the fence.
Westvale Olympic Soccer Club has requested a change room facility be built at their home grounds at McKechnie Reserve, St Albans, for the club’s increasing number of female players.
One soccer club the council helped in the past year, after a campaign lasting more than 10 years, was the Cairnlea Sports Club (formerly known as the Albion Rovers Soccer Club). The council has told the club that it can move to Cairnlea Park.
Cr Natalie Suleyman said another success was the expansion at the Sydenham Park.
