Kilburn Football Club wants to stick it out in Div 3
EMBATTLED Kilburn Football Club says it wants to play out the 2014 amateur football league season in division three and believes it can rebuild next season.
EMBATTLED Kilburn Football Club says it wants to play out the 2014 amateur football league season in division three and believes it can rebuild next season.
The league’s 66 clubs are understood to be considering calling an extraordinary meeting to vote on whether the Chics should be dropped to a C-Grade competition, following consecutive 300 point hammerings to start the year.
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Kilburn treasurer Danny Parks said the club board and players held votes last week and opted not to request demotion.
Mr Parks denied reports the club was in financial turmoil and that a mass player exodus was the result of it getting behind in payments to players last season. ALDINGA SHARKS SACK COACH AFTER 300-POINT LOSS
He said the club paid all players in full but decided to slash payments by about 75 per cent this year because the amounts were unsustainable.
“It wasn’t about money that we owed them, it was about money that they could get elsewhere this season,’’ Mr Parks said.
“Our A-Grade (from last year) are getting paid $107,000 collectively at other clubs across the state this year.
“As a board we made a conscious decision, knowing that this might happen, but we no longer could feed their hunger for money.
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“We had to put a stop to it because 99 per cent of the time of the board and the volunteers was going into raising money to pay the footballers.”
Mr Parks did not believe the league’s other clubs would call an extraordinary meeting and vote to demote the club.
He said demographic changes in Blair Athol and Kilburn over the past decade meant the Chics — a division one powerhouse about a decade ago — now struggled to attract local footballers.
The area is now home to a large community of migrant families from Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Europe. Soccer is quickly becoming the dominant football code.
Kilburn recently won The Governor’s Multicultural Award for programs it runs but it is yet to produce a generation of senior male migrant footballers.
In a sign of the times, Kilburn Oval is regularly filled with young migrants kicking soccer balls around on week nights, with the club allowing them to use the oval for free.
The Chics are desperately trying to recruit player to improve results this season.