Community Change

It is a tough subject this week! How many people does it take to make change in your society. It took me a while but I think I worked it out and my answer is 17. Seventeen because that was the number of adults pictured in this football club photo, taken for a local newspaper publication. It took years but our little local football club after a long time of trying, started delivering some really good results.

It was a lot of hard work. I started taking my son down to play in the under eights. They were so small, like the players in the front row of the photo. Things felt pretty unorganised at the start, I could not just stand by and watch, so I put my hand up and volunteered to coach. In Australian Rules Football the junior teams have less players and they play on a smaller part of the ground. Smaller numbers mean it is easier to manage, coach and the players get more time with the ball to learn the skills.

Year after year we got better. The Four Dads that started coaching the under eights all merged into one team as we moved up through the age groups. We won the clubs first Premiership in ages. Then the teams that came after us all started doing well too. So well that the year the first photo was taken, we won our second Premiership and the younger teams won another 3 Premierships all in different age groups. We are at the back. The local paper wanted a photo of all the winning teams together.

So what was the secret? We thought they were putting something in the local water supply. But the presidents in the front of the photo said it was more the way our team of players, parents and coaches conducted themselves week after week, year after year at training that filtered down through the whole club.