Maryborough Castlemaine District Football League
Royal Park win Club of the Year award
The Royal Park FNC has been acknowledged as the Worksafe AFL Victoria Country Club of the Year for 2013.
The Club of the Year announcement was made at last Saturday night's AFL Victoria Country Premiers Dinner at the Hilton on the Park in East Melbourne, where around 450 representatives from football and netball clubs and leagues from all across Victoria were in attendance.
Royal Park treasurer Stacey Hartwell, who was awarded the Max Martin Administrator of the Year award at the Maryborough & Castlemaine District FNL's Berry Powell Medal night in early September, was in attendance on the night to accept the award from representatives from award sponsor Energysafe and mentioned that it was somewhat of a surreal experience
"[Winning the award] was very overwhelming", Hartwell commented.
"We knew that we were in with a chance, but hearing Royal Park announced as the Club of the Year was very exciting and overwhelming at the same time".
"When we were notified [by the MCDFNL] of the submission process for the award, we had just four days to prepare our submission!".
"We arranged for a group of six people to prepare the submission, which ended up filling 22 pages!"
"I couldn't be prouder of our club's achievements and it's only today [Monday] that the enormity of the award has sunk in".
A major reason why the Tigers were so successful in winning the award was their charitable contributions over the last two years - after winning the Anti-Cancer Council President's Award in 2012 for their work raising over $20,000 with their "Royal Waive" campaign, they continued again in 2013 to help out the Blue Ribbon Foundation.
"In 2013, we supported Paul Moore, the son of Senior Constable Maurice Moore who lost his life in the line of duty in 1986 and who's mother and brother are life members of the club", Hartwell explained.
"We donated the entire gate takings from one of our 2013 games for Paul, as well as conducting a fundraising auction, to help him reach his goal of raising $10,000 for the Blue Ribbon Foundation which he actually doubled".
It wasn't just their charitable contributions that won Royal Park the award though, with a solid improvement in all areas of the club, both on and off-field in 2013.
"[The club] had a 430% increase in membership in 2013, as well as going from having just five sponsors to thirty", Hartwell mentioned
On field, the Tigers senior football side won four games in season 2013 after not winning a match in 2012 and experiencing just two wins in both 2010 and 2011 combined. The senior netballers also performed well, finishing just a game outside the finals, but it was the juniors that were the pride of Royal Park this season, with all of their junior sides (three netball and one football) playing finals in 2013, which marked the first time in some ten years that Royal Park have contested a junior finals series.
"Our main focus is developing our juniors", said Hartwell.
"We're hoping to have teams in all junior grades in 2014 - we've already worked hard to try and get Under 17.5 and Under 12 sides for next season and we're confident we'll have them".
The focus of the Tigers has already shifted towards 2014 - a season which sees the Royal Park hierarchy confidently predicting success.
"[Our senior football side] will play finals next year, that's a guarantee", Hartwell predicts.
"We're recruiting heavily and aren't far off having a complete playing list [for 2014] already - we're not far off"!
MCDFNL Article
Last Modified on 15/10/2013 13:21