To summarise Yarroweyah Football Netball Club’s season as ‘tough’ would be an understatement, which the club freely admits.
No wins came from either the reserves or seniors in the football, nor the A or B-grade netballers.
In fact, no wins came on the court at all, with the Hoppers only managing victory in the junior football, with the fourths mustering four wins in their campaign.
But as committee member Zoe Franklin explained, the fact the club even made it through the year was a remarkable feat in itself.
“The season started off really rough, there was I reckon probably not even 20 footballers including juniors and everything as well, and there was about seven netballers at the start of the season,” she said.
“They pretty much had to rebuild the teams from scratch, every single one of the teams.
“Now finishing the season, we were able to field every side except C-Reserve in netball, and all of our football teams bar the thirds.”
It would have been easy for players and supporters alike to have walked away entirely as soon as the final siren sounded in the last home and away game of the season.
After a frankly disastrous season, forgetting about football or netball for a while and coming back in a few months with a fresh mindset might have been the approach many others took.
But it takes more than a poor season to keep the Hoppers down.
On Sunday, September 1, despite having not a single team advancing into finals, Yarroweyah FNC rolled up its sleeves to host the Picola and District Football Netball League preliminary finals.
With plenty of chatter among the wider PDFNL community about the club’s ability to host such a big day, the Hoppers pulled together to deliver a seamless event, drawing praise from those in attendance.
"It was a really hard season, especially for all of our senior grades but they still managed to get through the whole year with the full sides and teams — winless — but still managed to get to the end of the season,” Franklin said.
“Then obviously having people question whether we were going to be able to even hold a preliminary final, there was a lot of talk and a lot of speculation whether we were going to be able to be able to hold it, whether we were going to be able to have the funding for it, because the club has really struggled financially as well.
“And then on the day we were able to quite successfully pull it off. I think a few of the other prelims around the area had run out of food by one o'clock and a few other things, but we were able to successfully get to the end of the day with food still available, no stock running out.
“We had quite a few people, including other club presidents, comment that it was very well run, and the grounds were super clean and tidy, and everything was just run really well, so it was a very good day for the club.”
Players and supporters turned up in droves to help the club put on the big day, and their efforts were rewarded massively, with the event running smoothly despite the challenge of what is believed to be a record crowd for a PDFNL preliminary final.
Behind the scenes it was quite frantic, with Franklin revealing that even just two weeks out the club was in talks about giving up the hosting rights. However, just as they have done time and time again, the club and its people rallied to ensure that the job got done.
“I think within the last two weeks, just before the prelim, it was really put into question whether it was actually going to go ahead or not,” Franklin said.
“We had put it to the committee and put it to the club that we might not be able to hold it, which obviously cancelling a preliminary final two weeks out from the actual final, it was probably going to be detrimental to the club.
“Not only that we're going to lose money, but we were probably going to be the laughing stock really, not being able to hold it and having to palm it off to another club in two weeks.
“So it was really put to the club, the committee voted that we were going to be able to do it.
“A lot of planning went into it, sourcing funding, getting it done and finding the volunteers, because we really struggled all year with getting people to actually volunteer their time.
“But the club really pulled together and banded together, and we had over 50 volunteers for the day.”
The benefit for Yarroweyah has been massive, with the club fielding plenty of inquiries from prospective coaches and players alike following on from the success of the prelim, which has created some positive momentum that the club hopes to ride into next season.
“It's definitely helped us out financially as well, holding it, but hopefully just shows people that we can do it and we can pull together as a small community club and get things done,” Franklin said.
“We have had quite a bit of Interest, and it'll be really good going into the off-season now and heading into pre-season to see how much interest we do actually get.”