To get funding to develop grounds and facilities requires user numbers to be substantial. Working together would achieve that.

Calling people gypsies doesn't solve anyone's problems, nor does using community facilities when you don't open them to the community it's located in. we want football to flourish for everyone - this is not a fight against a club, it's against a system which does not consider growth and inclusivity as important.

Good post, Daniel, quite detailed.

https://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/knox-city-council-change-the-current-sporting-reserve-facility-usage-guidelines-policy#share

Mate

First off all we never cross path with Knox United. We dont care what they do or how many teams they have. Success I dont think they had any in their history. Since they never played in a higher division.

You need also to look at the state of our ground. It is by far the worst in State 4. Last season we had 2 players with knee reco's and I lost count in how many other injuries. I will post a photo here to have a look and let me know if you would train and play on that!

Rowville Eagles is a non profit organization which has volunteers working there. We spend our own money in that facility to make it suitable for night training, now you want us to allow United to train there and pay $200/quater for electricity use??? This season we have to spend around 10k for new lights.
Would you let your neighbour move in your house just because he has more kids then you????????

Regarding gypsies, United acted like them not us. We never went in their house to rent their back yard. Yet their former secretary stalked us every training session sitting in the carpark counting our players..
They were part of the Italian Club in Knox so they did have a ground to play on.
They were offered a decent Reserve by the council in Wantirna and they didn't want that. WHY?? Cause they need to spend some money an they won't make any profit for the year.
There is a state of the art facility in Wantirna that can be hired. It's $8 an hour for the small pitches to train on and play SSF games.We rent it and use it last season when the ground was water logged. Why dont they rent that??????? Because they won't make any profit again.

It's embarassing how this issue is dragging on and on. And for your own info we did allow them to train on the pitch for one season and play junior games on Sunday. So who are the gypsies here???

We were more then reasonable in trying to solve this problem.
All we want is for those guys to leave us alone. That's it!


Appologies for any spelling mistakes

All the best and Go Victory in the Week-end!

DP




Edited by Daniel Puscasu: 22/2/2013 01:16:36 PM

Andrew Dimitrou, AFL, Dwayne Russell 3AW Melbourne, Eddie McGuire (everywhere in Melbourne), Tom Elliot 3AW, the whole SEN commentary team 1116 on the am dial, read this and cry as usual.

The SOKER is growing faster than footy. Oh noooo, please let's find some negatives into this, Council must stand up against the SOKER, oh nooooo. What are we going to do, how are we going to continue the attacks on SOKER if the sport is growing!!!!!

SSHHHH, do not talk about tanking, tanking coverups, drug taking, drug taking coverups, night club figthing, driving under the influence, mixing with bike gangs, urinating in public places, if this is kept secrete the public will not know about it and will continue to pour money in footy, pay huge price to take the family to the footy where all those nice things happen. Footy, what a competition!!!! so honest and clean

Also...I fully understand that incumbant clubs spend a lot of money on facilities, and that gournds tend to not cope well with extra use. All valid points.

However, there is also room for negotiation, and if you are dealing with intelligent people then sharing facilities can be a good thing, ie. sharing costs, improving facilities faster, installing a all weather surface etc.etc. etc.

FFV really need to improve their grassroots policies and come to the aid of clubs that are develping the next generation if footballers. We have many clubs with senior only teams and no juniors. Their grounds sit dormant most of the time...FFV we need you. I also think FFA should have directives to look at addressing the ground shortage in Victoria and around the country..

Just sucks that Knox council (for some strange reason???$$$???) keeps allocating grounds to clubs who intentionally falsify team numbers to justify continued use. OR when certain clubs renege on agreements for sharing of facilities.

Leaving a lot of kids training and playing on substandard facilities. Most with deep holes, no facilities (toilets, rooms etc) and just terrible. Surely you council rates should be able to cover this. Maybe bit more spending on local children and less on overseas junkets :)So much waste!

Also no one ever owns a council ground...the people own it.

Regarding the gypsie comment, I guess it takes one to know one...:)

Hoping Knox United can get the new facilities at Knox Regional Football Centre for no/low fee in lieu of not having the support of council. FFV can make this happen!

AFL and NRL BE SCARED the world game is going to knock you over, more and more kids participating every year, now we just have to get those kids and parents to an A league game regulary.

If you're going to have a problem then in a strange way this is a great problem to have. Club and parents want facilities and local politicians want to get elected. A nice set of circumstances. Better this than not having enough juniors to fill the space. Football is onwards and upwards.

Manly United is the perfect example of a strong club who solved these problems a little while back when the use of Cromer Park was intense. The astroturf surface was definitely the answer and its amazing!

A non ethnic club is a club that doesn't have an identity to do with an ethnic group, aboriginal australian is still an ethnicity.

This.

Macktheknife doesnt understand. He thought anglos were native to Australia. :roll:

And then you put the other slabs on the concrete as required.

We need more astroturf fields. Secondly, can we have concrete base rectangular slab and then a shed which contains smaller slabs with astroturf and some slabs with grass grown on shelves like a carpark ? ! I'm just giving an idea, to get people to think more on it.

Just go to Knox Regional Football Centre seeing as Knox City moved back to Egan Lee reserve !

"They’re like gypsies – I don’t want to offend anyone but that’s how they are."

Hahahaha. Love it!

But all jokes aside... he is right. Most of the existing facilities have been developed/constructed without a single dollar being chipped in from the local council/s. All completed with donated money, time and labour. Unless a club has folded, they have no right to demand to use another club's facilities, unless the club was so nice as to offer it to them.

If they are using the facilities Monday through to Friday, I don't know how they still expect their pitch to be in good condition.

Maybe they should look into using/developing some of the vacant land along the Eastlink, just like they did with the Knox Regional Sports Park.

Macktheknife- I don't understand. Unless they are indigenous, aren't all clubs ethnic? British, German, Greek, Italian, etc.
What is a non-ethnic club in suburban league?

Is Knox an ethnic club?

“It’s not our problem – that’s our ground it’s as simple as that. Last year they were merging with Boronia, this year they want to come to Park Ridge Reserve, next year they’re going to pick someone else. They’re like gypsies – I don’t want to offend anyone but that’s how they are.”

Haha good to see they are still able to drag gypsies into it. Its this kind of infighting that lets the game down. Clubs, federations and councils should be working together to sort this shit out.

This is by no means an isolated problem. The Central Coast Association has been making noises about capping numbers for a while. Not sure what the policy currently is, but there is huge pressure on the grounds. Being an O45 player, I sometimes wonder whether we're being greedy and ought to retire to make more room for the kids (and provide more refs)...but I also want to continue playing to stay fit.

Plus I love the game more than any other person in the world, so why should I stop?

Knox has recently had a 5's facility including 2 full-sized pitches built. Who was allocated the use of these grounds, one of the existing clubs or have the council kept them as a revenue raiser ? These low maintenance fields provide the perfect future for the burgeoning code as the councils no longer have to outlay millions in re-surfacing. Synthetics are being used across Sydney now allowing for use 365 days a year without a cricket pitch in sight. Maybe its time the Melbourne clubs started co-operating with the local schools to bring those under utilised facilities into the fold and taking the councils out of the equation.

All the recent improvements to the top tiers of football in Australia could be jeopardised if the infrastructure isn't in place at the grassroots level to accomodate kids getting into the game.Limited playing fields means competition for these fields which drives up demand with a flow on effect in cost for club members.More 6 a side games as recommended by the FFA report a few years ago will help ease this pressure but only temporarily if football keeps growing as it is.Ultimately this is a situation where the FFA needs to side with other sports in Australia to press for the government to allocate more land within Australia's cities for sport and recreation..it's not just about the growth of football but also the health and well being of all Aussies.

and the flipside is, club being kicked off it's own facilities. Unless councils find a way to build more grounds, there's always a loser. There's a good reason why incumbents keep their grounds and the "under-utilised" scenario is usually only a football argument. They then put people on the ground 5 nights a week and all weekend and wonder why the ground is completely destroyed after a year.

they better get used to it, there's going to be a lot of parents who don;'t want thier kids to grow up and be involved in the AFL culture, NRL as well.

Interesting item considering the area is somewhat something of an AFL stronghold. I hope our Football hierarchy can do something for the "Knox" club. I also hope 4-4-2 keep us up to date with developments


What do you think about the FourFourTwo article Ground war in pitch battle?
BOOM club Knox United says it’s a victim of its own success with the nomadic outfit unable to tie down a regular home ground to meet its burgeoning juniors program.

Have your say.