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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2016-06-21 Daily Xml
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Finniss Electorate

Mr PENGILLY (Finniss) (15:39): I listened with interest to the member for Kaurna earlier, and I would also like to make a contribution today about the winter sports activities that take place in the electorate of Finniss. I think it is worth giving some credit to those who organise and conduct those sports and particularly to recognise those who play and those who go along. I have two leagues in my electorate: the Great Southern league on the Fleurieu and Kangaroo Island Football League and netball league on the island. Great Southern has a netball league as well.

Situated within my particular electorate, I have the football and netball clubs that play at Yankalilla and a great club at Myponga-Sellicks. It is important to note that Myponga and Sellicks really could not exist without one another. They amalgamated some years ago and it has been a great success story, not only on the sports field but also at the school, because half the children who go to Myponga Primary School come up the hill from Sellicks on a daily bus. Indeed, it has certainly brought those two small places together.

I have Mount Compass in my electorate, which is well and truly out there this year on the football field, and Goolwa/Port Elliot, which was combined some years ago after Port Elliot Football Club amalgamated with Goolwa. They were the subject of a number of media stories with the way they were getting successively flogged week after week; however, they have reinvented themselves as Goolwa/Port Elliot. There is also Victor Harbor Football Club, and the associated netball club, and Encounter Bay. I happen to be a sponsor of Yankalilla Football Club and Encounter Bay Football Club. Why am I a sponsor for them? Because they asked me. I will probably get asked by everyone else now, but I also give a few dollars to the Myponga Netball Club.

These clubs exist purely for the opportunity to play sport and be involved in a really healthy manner on particularly Saturday afternoons and in training during the week. To go to football or netball in Great Southern costs you $6 to get in the gate—somewhat different from what you have to pay to go to Adelaide Oval. At these ovals, you can go in, park around the oval, participate, talk to your friends, get cheap food during the day and have a really good day for $6. It is a very cheap day's entertainment for people, and in the country they just love doing it.

I will turn to the island. I am a patron of the Kangaroo Island Football League and follow with interest what happens over there. There are five football and netball clubs in existence: Dudley United, which is a combination of Penneshaw and American River; Kingscote; the Parndana club; Western Districts; and my own home club of Wisanger, of which I am the patron. It cost me a dollar to be that, too, I might add.

It is an enormous credit to the KI Football League that they have been able to keep football going with the reducing numbers. Player numbers are down substantially. Netball is very strong, as it is in other places, but Great Southern has a bigger population to draw on than the island has, so I really congratulate Andrew Heinrich, the president of the football league, and others involved, without going through them all, that they keep it up.

This year again they have competed in the Mortlock competition at Port Lincoln on the long weekend—for the final time, I understand. They struggled to get a team to go over, and they could not have done that if it were not for the sponsorship of Thomas Foods International, who chartered the aircraft to get them over and back. They played well, but they actually had to borrow players from the West Coast to get through; likewise, Great Southern also plays inter league.

Country football on the long weekend in June is all about competitions in regional areas. It is a great way for everyone to play together. In talking about these sports, I am not forgetting other sports that are played on the Fleurieu—soccer, hockey and other winter sports. We then have equestrian sports, with the hunt clubs and pony clubs.

Time expired.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Another day we can look forward to you finishing that off.

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