What an eventful year 2021 was for our Club!
At the start of the year, we hosted a combined team from Newman that was a huge success, from both a footballing experience and with the camaraderie among the players.
We had a successful season launch at Celebration Park on a very hot March afternoon, and during the ceremony, we were delighted to welcome 4 new life members to the club, Keith Anderson, Carla Bennett, Emily Dunn and Nicola Williams.
Keith was a long term member of our club and served as President for a long period of time. Carla, Emily and Nicola all became automatic life members once they had played 200 1st team games for the club.
They all joined our inaugural member and club founder, Tim Hodgson who was also presented with his life membership certificate on the day.
With a new set of sponsors on board, it was decided by the committee we should invest in a consistent kit brand for the club, and all teams looked very smart in their new shirts courtesy of our sponsors for the NPLW and junior teams, and we thank EPIROC, SARACENI FIRE ENGINEERING, BFT Fremantle, TOTAL CONCRETE and our equipment suppliers, ONSIDE SPORTS for their generous support this season.
Our home ground was close to capacity for many weekends and we are very grateful for all the hard work done by our volunteers on game days to make sure everything was in place.
We continued to work hard with local councillors and State parliamentarians to make sure we maximised any grants that we could apply for.
April was a very difficult month as we had to lose one of our teams due to a number of factors beyond our control. We consolidated with six teams and the season was marked by a very strong sense of club with many players turning out for different teams to make sure each of our sides had a full complement of players every weekend.
The very wet weather in July and August caused a significant number of match postponements resulting in many fixturing problems. However, our hard-working coaches, managers and registrar worked collaboratively to ensure rescheduled games were played and to protect our pitches at Celebration Park for training and matches for the whole season.
During the season we continued to mark notable achievements by our players, and we welcomed two more members of our 200 game club when Larissa Walsh and Renee Leota joined, Carla, Emily and Nicola in this very special group.
President Tony Mullen was on hand on both occasions to present the players with their commemorative trophies.
Our sides enjoyed a great deal of success including runners up in the NPLW, top 4 finishes in the Metro and U16’s and a league title for our U14’s who remained undefeated in the league. Our U16’s and U14’s both won their Top 4 cups also.
It is noteworthy that two of our NPLW players earned Perth Glory contracts, 5 players secured placements with the NTC and 10 players made their NPLW debuts.
After the season finished we held trials for new players, with over 80 trialists for a period of nearly 4 weeks. Thanks to all coaches and senior players who ensured the trials ran smoothly.
In 2022 we will be fielding U12’s for the first time ever , U14’s U16’s, U18’s, Metro 2, State League/Amateur league, NPLW U21 and NPLW teams.
We have always tried to develop female coaches and next season we will have female coaches for our U12’s, U16’s, Metro 2, State League/Amateur (female coach and female assistant coach) and we will also have a female goalkeeping coach.
I wish everyone all the best for the Festive Season and I look forward to seeing you all in Season 2022!
