North Heidelberg and Macleod top Australia-wide Good For Footy raffle

Two Northern Football League clubs finished among Australia’s top local footy clubs in the Toyota Good For Footy raffle fundraiser.

Macleod and North Heidelberg topped the national Toyota Good For Footy raffle.

Two Northern Football League clubs have finished among Australia’s top local footy clubs in the Toyota Good For Footy raffle fundraiser.

North Heidelberg and Macleod raised more than $45,000 combined in the annual fundraiser, finishing second and fifth overall respectively.

The Bulldogs raised a staggering $27,865, pipped by North Warrnambool in first, while the Kangas totalled $18,800.

North Heidelberg president Warren Haysom said the community support was great appreciated.

“We exceeded our expectations, this season was a little different to last year when we had a full season out.

Anthony Daw in action for North Heidelberg.

“We finished third last year, so we’ve backed it up really strongly.

“After the season was called off we focused our energies on it and got great support from a number of people and even quite a few people I wasn’t familiar with.”

Haysom said there were some improvements planned for Shelley Oval and some funds would be set aside for a rainy day.

“We’ll continue capital improvements and upgrades, we’re in consultation with council,” he said.

“We’ve got some plans for Shelley Reserve in terms of lighting upgrades and then potentially some bigger improvements to our facility.

“It widens the revenue base as well, some of your traditional areas of revenue aren’t as dominant so you’ve got to look at other ways of raising funds and a lot of it will be set aside for costs.”

Reid Brandt in action for Macleod. Picture: Stuart Milligan

It was Macleod’s third straight year in the top 10 after finishing first in 2019 and 2020, while North Heidelberg came in third in 2020.

The Kangas have been a pioneer of fundraising in recent seasons, led by Chris Long.

President Steve Doherty said the money would ensure the club was in a strong position on and off the field.

“When it went to online selling we did a promotion through the club and as a result other clubs, even the Toyota people themselves gave us a call,” he said.

“The funds will help us greatly run the club in just every day, it helps us meet our financial requirements to our players but also the league, council and people we employ to get jobs done.

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“Some of the money will be used to employ a fitness and conditioning coach for pre-season to get us prepared.

“We’ll probably have a longer pre-season pre-Christmas, the lack of fitness, we found last year not playing for a year we had a lot of injuries early.”

The Northern Football League was the only competition in Australia with two clubs inside the top 10.

The VAFA was the only other metropolitan league with a representative, UHS-VU finished eighth with $16,510.