9th April, 2021 — Volunteers
Ballarat City FC achieves highest accreditation
Ballarat City FC in regional Victoria are proud to achieve the highest level of Good Sports accreditation. The club began in 1968, as the Red Devils. As a large club of 250 members and a lot of history, this move to keep improving their club just made sense.
Committee chair David Sproules explains that he’s been mainly involved in cricket for many years. He had been at a Good Sports accredited club previously, before becoming involved with Ballarat FC last year. Before David came on board, the club was already with Good Sports. He made the move to level the club up.
David loves how all the information is right there. The program is easy for clubs to pick up. Especially when volunteer-based clubs may be time poor or not have the necessary experience to create their own policies and procedures.
“I think its great program. It makes it so clubs don’t have to reinvent the wheel with their policies and procedures around alcohol and other things. I wanted to make sure Ballarat FC were adopting everything Good Sports has to offer,” he says.
Football during the time of coronavirus
“During COVID-19 physical distancing restrictions, we had online programs running. It was to keep connection with younger groups. Zoom, What’s App and other platforms are helpful. We were mainly doing drills and keeping in touch as much as possible. We wanted our members to keep connected and aware,” David explains.
The club has been back playing since the start of July 2020. It’s only the Under 7s to 12s teams, and the girls’ Under 13s and 16s. The seniors were sadly cancelled for the year.
“It’s just something we need to do at the moment. Sport is important but people’s lives are more important,” David says.
An inclusive and safe future at Ballarat City FC
Ballarat FC has lots of great ideas on how they can improve their club. As well as continuing to work with Good Sports, they have adopted two other programs.
One is around gender equality. It includes education to raise awareness about violence against women and equality in sport. They are also completing a mental health program, to enable their club to more open and continue to be a supportive place for all members.
“These programs are good to adopt to provide the duty of care to all our people. We want to look after them. We’re trying to be the best club we can be.”