Footscray Hockey Club is scoring goals on and off the field. 70637 Picture: KRISTIAN SCOTT
By Liam Twomey
THE Footscray Hockey Club is no longer content with just scoring goals on the field. They now want to be number one off it.
The club was recently named the Best Junior Hockey Club in Melbourne, beating 67 rivals to earn the title.
The girls’ hockey program was voted number one while the boys’ was voted number two, giving them the overall number one ranking.
Junior co-ordinator Brendan Sheehan said it was all down to the hard work done by the club.
“The junior division has 90 volunteers that help across all the teams.We are also lucky to have an even split among the number of boys and girls that play for us,” Sheehan said.
Despite being the best in the business, Footscray has no plans to get complacent, in fact they are focussed solely on how they can improve as a club.
“We certainly want to maintain what we have at the moment. There are around 250 kids that play for the club. We want to be able to have the sort of numbers where kids can play in any grade from A Grade right through to the lower grades. That way no matter what their ability they can be fitted into the right team,” Sheehan said.
The award comes just at the right time for the club whose division two men’s side had a nail-biting encounter in their grand final on Sunday.
Footscray won the match 11-10 on penalties after the sides were locked at 4-4 after full time and extra time.
The result means they will remain in A Grade for the next two seasons as the competition expands in 2013. Sheehan said the result was huge for the club who now don’t have to worry about their players being poached by other clubs.
“It’s almost impossible in our sport to become one of the big clubs, had we not have won that game we would have been open to everyone coming in and poaching our players,” he said.
“We will now have the opportunity to really find our feet in A Grade.”
Sheehan believes the current crop of juniors coming through will ensure the club remains in a good position for many seasons to come.
“That’s what its all about, we have really gone out on a limb in recent times to get some champions from overseas to come and mentor our kids. That has been a lot of hard work and has really payed dividends,” Sheehan said.
“We have 60 juniors who play seniors every weekend. We are really happy with the way they can make the transition into adult sport.”
Last season, 45 Footscray juniors represented the club in the Western Region representative side and they managed to double the number of state representatives they had this past 12 months.
They also had eight teams compete in grand finals with four victories.
Anyone wishing to find out more information about joining the Footscray Hockey Club can log on to the club’s website.
