Henley Football Club

The Hon. P. CAICA (Colton) (16:23): Earlier this year, and you would remember this, Deputy Speaker, I stood in this place and detailed to the house many aspects of the great West Torrens District Cricket Club and the successful season it had last year, but today what I want to do is speak about another outstanding sporting club that is based at the Henley Memorial Oval—the great Henley Football Club, the mighty Sharks.

The 2016 season for the Henley Football Club was, to say the least, disappointing and certainly not what the players and members of the club have come to expect. At the end of that season, the club found itself in the bottom two positions in A grade, the senior competition and, as a consequence, found ourselves relegated to the second division. As I said earlier, this was disappointing and a bitter pill to swallow; however, we as a club did not drop our bundle. The club galvanised with one objective: to field the best possible team we could in 2017, to appoint a new coach, and put in place the necessary structures to deliver on this one and single objective—to ensure a return to the top division.

Rod Hill and his football department recruited a senior coach, Jarrad Wright (Boofa)—I will use their nicknames because that is how we all know them—who brought along with him Brent Reilly, the former Crows player, as his assistant coach. Also his dad filled in as part of the coaching team. Jarrad Parker (Pretzel) coached the Bs, and Chris Brown (Brownie) coached the Cs. We put together a very good coaching contingent throughout the senior grades of the club.

It was mentioned earlier by the member for Elder that clubs are really only as successful as the many volunteers who underpin the numerous roles within the club, and that includes our trainers, our team managers, those who cook the barbecue, those who cook the meals on the Thursday night and the Saturdays, and others who support the club in a variety of ways.

We were lucky enough to have a major refurbishment of the Henley Football Club clubrooms undertaken over the Christmas period late last year. This refurbishment has been an outstanding success to the extent that it is clear that all of the visiting clubs that have come to Henley this season are so envious of our new clubrooms. There were many who contributed to this project, and I want to thank those club members who provided their time and resources in kind. In particular, I want to acknowledge the main drivers of the redevelopment and their roles who almost, if not did, acted as the project managers for this particular refurbishment. Club workhorse, Teresa Davoren, fulfils many roles. She was magnificent in managing this project, along with George Charalabidis. Like so many volunteers, these two in particular are always willing to put their hand up to help the club in any way they can.

Deputy Speaker, I know that you are sitting on the edge of your seat and asking yourself, 'How did the Sharks go?' I can inform you and everyone here that the Henley Football Club had a magnificent season. With our three senior teams, our A-grade team were minor premiers, losing only one game during the season, finishing minor premiers, and taking out the grand final in an exciting game against Athelstone, who were clearly the second best team in the competition.

Pretzel's B grade were undefeated minor premiers but lost the grand final against Sacred Heart, who were the better team on the day. They benefitted from the fact that they had no other teams in the senior competition playing in the grand final and were able to get some players who had not necessarily played throughout the season in that team, but the Bs can be very proud of the season that they had. The C-grade, Brownie's boys, undefeated premiers—what more can be said about that? A combination of experience and youth, a team that was magnificent all season. And, next year, we are back in the premier division.

I mentioned volunteers earlier. I also want to acknowledge the committee and recognise those who are standing down after outstanding service to the club: the treasurer, Vanessa Spaans; secretary, Mary Pavlich; Teresa Davoren, who stood down earlier in the season because of work commitments; and Nick Bridgeman. I also wish to acknowledge the work of other committee members, in particular, Michael Broadbent, our sponsorship officer. I would also like to mention the Henley Heroes, Trevor Sampson and his band of merry men who raise a lot of money for the club as well as the social committee known as the GLAMS.

I want to finish briefly by talking about the juniors. The juniors also have an outstanding committee and have been very successful this year. The highlight was the introduction of four girls teams. It is safe to say, more than anecdotally, that these girls teams are really changing the culture of the club, and changing it for the better. I want to acknowledge Peter Evans and his management of the girls and the development of the girls teams. Next season we will be looking at fielding an under-18 team in the girls' division. They, the girls, are transformational with respect to the culture that is now being bred and developed within the club. Henley Football Club had a fantastic season.