Salisbury West returns from the brink to lead amateur football’s division seven ladder
FRANK Timpano remembers returning to Salisbury West Football Club as president and asking where all the players were. Now the Tigers are eyeing premiership glory.
FRANK Timpano remembers returning to Salisbury West Football Club as president and asking where all the players were.
“It was late February last year and there was about two or three on the track,” recalls Timpano, also the club’s president for two seasons in the late-2000s.
“I was wondering then if we’d get a team out.”
At the time, Salisbury West was reeling from being demoted to the amateur league’s seventh tier – despite making the division four grand final in 2014 – for failing to sign enough players.
The club was also battling financially and had a mass exodus at the end of 2014 after some players were not paid in full.
Fast-forward 18 months and the Tigers are on top of the division seven ladder with a 15-0 record and a new board.
“You’ve got to set structures and plans – it just doesn’t happen,” Timpano says.
“It’s a lot of hard work.
“We got a mixture of old players back and a lot of new players too ... and there’s a completely new committee with a completely new direction.
“Everything has just been so good and now we just want to get out (of division seven).”
The Tigers’ fightback started last year when they won five games in division seven then recruited more than 30 players during the off-season.
“People could see there was going to be a bit of light at the end of the tunnel,” Timpano says.
Vice-captain Justin Davies has been at Salisbury West since under-8s, sticking with the club during its struggles of the past two years.
“It’s pretty pleasing to go on the way up where we should be,” Davies says.
“The people that we have got don’t want to be where we are.”
Davies says winning his first senior premiership at the Tigers will be even more special given what the club has endured.