Local footy club volunteer for 40 years and going strong

JOY Trotter-Harris has been with the Hamilton Imperials, now Hamilton Kangaroos, for 40 seasons.

Score on the board: Joy Harris at the Melville Oval canteen, where she has volunteered for the Hamilton Kangaroos Football Club for over 40 years.

JOY Trotter-Harris has been with the Hamilton Imperials, now Hamilton Kangaroos, for 40 seasons.

For her, nothing has surpassed the joy of being able to run out on to the ground after winning a flag, the last one being in 2001 in the Western Border league.

Or the club’s inaugural A-grade netball premiership in 1998, of which she was team manager.

Hamilton Imperials merged with Hamilton Football Club in 2012 to become Hamilton Kangaroos, which plays in the Hampden league.

“I know it’s only country football but you put your heart and soul into the club and there are just so many happy people around,” Joy said.

After that netball premiership, she says she became involved in the social club, helping to run events and fundraisers, and for the past 15 years has also run the canteen.

She knows exactly how much a hungry football and netball crowd can eat — quite a lot: “The cooking part of it is mainly the chips. I can go through 18 5kg bags of chips … on busy games, night games we can.”

“On a good day you’d go through 10 dozen pies, soup that I make, hot chips, you can go through anything up to 100 hotdogs, we run a BBQ so therefore you’ve got steak sausages, and we also do lamb burgers.”

Parents help run this feast, but so do the footballers during the morning.

“This is the engine room, this is where your money comes from. This is where you’ve got to be,” Joy said.

“It’s good PR for the club, to have a senior footballer make one of your supporters a cup of coffee or whatever — and our boys love it, they really do.”

People like Joy help make the clubs run, and Joy has been recognised for her contributions,

But she says: “You don’t do it for the accolades. You do it because you’re part of a club. Many hands make light work”.