Two years ago, the Shepparton Swans Football Netball Club’s clubrooms and facilities were destroyed by Victoria’s 2022 floods which, the club president says, left the community devastated.
After the Goulburn River rose above the levee banks for the first time in 50 years, the Swans’ ground and club infrastructure became submerged in water, leaving them facing the next two seasons without a home.
Club president Jarrod Sutherland said many players, particularly younger ones, asked him: “Would our club survive or was it going to fall under or go under?”
The Shepparton Swans Football Netball Club’s rooms were destroyed by the 2022 floods.
The AFL stepped in to help with temporary unisex change rooms, allowing the club – which has had Adelaide’s Josh Rachelle and Hawthorn’s Jarman Impey come through its ranks – to have its football and netball teams ready in time for their 2023 pre-season preparation.
“The long-term future of the club was still in doubt at the time because of viability – without having clubrooms and to raise funds and whatnot through that – but once we had those rooms, we were able to play the sport on that ground and the netball courts,” said Sutherland.
“Because without those, then we wouldn’t be there. We’d be, I don’t know where we would be, to be honest.”
The AFL has poured millions of dollars into community clubs such as Shepparton across the country to help them recover from extreme weather events driven by the impacts of climate change, including fire and floods.
Since the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires, the league has helped 109 Victoria-based clubs, with 42 getting immediate relief payments and 67 receiving infrastructure or project-based funding support.
Brian Walsh, the general manager of corporate affairs, government and communication at the AFL, said it was important to help local clubs affected by weather events get back on their feet, especially because football clubs were often an epicentre for communities in regional areas.
“We found that, say, even with Rochester, Shepparton and the Swans, where the floods have had such a devastating impact, the footy club has been important in bringing the community together, so it’s been important for us to support them and try and provide funding to get the club back up and going to ensure that the community, in a way, gets up,” Walsh said.
Shepparton Swans Football Netball clubsrooms destroyed by the 2022 floods across Victoria.
He added that seeing clubs impacted by major weather events had galvanised the AFL internally to respond because weather would continue to have negative impacts on the sport.
“It is an ongoing thing for us now,” said Walsh. “It’s not a one-off thing that we talked about that happened five years ago, or four years ago, or three years ago. Every year, we’ve had community clubs that have been impacted by a climate event.
Former Port Adelaide and North Melbourne player Jasper Pittard.Credit: James Thomas, Australian Conservation Foundation
“Ninety-eight per cent of our staff wants us to do more and play our role ... And we know that our supporters think this [climate change] is an important issue.”
One of the infrastructure priorities of the AFL in recent years has been for clubs to become more gender friendly, to accommodate the growth in girls’ and women’s football. Walsh said with new facilities being built to foster and nurture the influx of female players, it also provided an opportunity to add in sustainability measures.
The league, along with the AFL Players’ Association, has also backed efforts from Footy for Climate to use the sport as a vehicle to mitigate the effects of climate change.
The organisation, co-founded by St Kilda’s Tom Campbell and former North Melbourne player Jasper Pittard, held an event at Parliament House last Wednesday night with various AFL players to speak about how footy can be a vehicle for change when it comes to climate concerns. It was attended by more than 50 members of parliament, and received bipartisan support according to Brighton MP James Newbury.
AFL CEO Andrew Dillon was among those at the Footy for Climate event at Parliament House in Victoria.
One of the main efforts of Footy for Climate, which in 2021 found 92 per cent of players were concerned about the effects of climate change on the environment and the implications that would have on their sport, was to help community clubs invest in renewable energy.
Newbury said that all parties were moved by the show of environmental leadership, in that it was a “player-led movement that seeks action to help protect all of our futures”.
The Shepparton Swans have bounced back with help from the AFL.
The Richmond Football Club remains the only AFL club to sign up to the global United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Sports for Climate Action, with the target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 50 per cent by 2030. The AFL has a target of being carbon-neutral by 2040.
The league, its players, the AFL Players’ Association, and members of parliament all had a role to play in safeguarding the future of the sport, said Campbell, including supporting renewable energy for community clubs, providing funding for sustainability measures, and being role models in the community.
“Another really important piece is to go to the footy,” Campbell said. “Support your local clubs because they thrive on attendance, support and volunteers. That’s a really big part of the messaging.”
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