OVER five thousand players have registered to play football on the North Coast as records tumble across football clubs in the region.

Registrations increased by 40% on the North Coast resulting in the strongest year on year growth in Northern New South Wales.

2021 registrations also surpassed 2019 volumes resulting in a full recovery in registrations from last year’s COVID-19 impacted season plus an additional growth of 7%.

Club Development Officer at Macksville Football Club, David Pirani gave some insights into the growth in numbers.

“This year we have 125 players registered so far spread over ten teams, two seniors, seven juniors and the MiniRoos whereas six years ago we had 45 players, two seniors and one junior team.

“In my opinion our growth has come from a great group of volunteers including our committee, a great tuck shop at our fields, a friendly environment and integrating our teams at training.

“It’s not unusual for our juniors to mix together or some of our older juniors to train with the seniors, this allows everyone to get to know each other, both players and parents and promotes a healthy atmosphere of older players mentoring younger.

“We have promoted the Active Kid’s Voucher provided by the state government, which has helped tremendously with our Junior development.

“The results being a growth from about 15 juniors to 77 plus an additional 17 MiniRoos ranging from five to seven year olds,” said David.

General Manager for North Coast Football, Andrew Woodward highlighted the efforts of the volunteers through the pandemic.

“With the global pandemic in 2020, our registration numbers were down by 10 per cent, I thought we could get half of that back this year.

“To get all of it back so quickly and add a few hundred more than what we had in 2019 is a tribute to the hard work of the clubs.

“Club volunteers worked long and tirelessly in 2020 making football happen, their hard work has been rewarded and that’s why we have over five thousand registrations, which is fantastic.

“We’ve seen many people switch to football from other sports, we’ve also seen new arrivals from Sydney, Melbourne and beyond as people escape the big cities after the worst of the pandemic.

“This year we’ve got more players, more teams, around 315 and a new club, BDC Barracudas.

“Football is heading in the right direction,” said Andrew.

 

By David WIGLEY