IT’S GONE! The much-loved Fish Creek Football Netball Club’s first-floor social rooms, and the old changerooms underneath, are gone.
Wasting no time after the arson attack on the building in the early hours of last Saturday morning, November 4, the club formed a new building subcommittee on Saturday afternoon, and by Tuesday they’d struck their first blow, demolishing the old building, which had been completely destroyed by fire.
The 37 premiership cups, the honour boards, the premiership team photos, some of them going back more than 100 years, and many of the premiership flags; they’ve all been lost.
As too has the sense of place for the Fish Creek community, not just a venue to gather after football and netball but also to hold meetings, wedding receptions, special birthdays, family gatherings and even funerals.
But heartened by a GoFundMe page that has already reached nearly $120,000, on its way to $250,000, and buoyed by overwhelming community support, and offers of help from outside the South Gippsland area as well, they’ve dusted themselves off and are taking the first tentative steps back.
“Yeah, it's been a big few days to say the least,” said Fish Creek FNC Co-President Nick Shaw on Gippsland ABC Radio this week.
Lots of mixed emotions, pretty overwhelming, but the support that's come through from everyone far and wide, players, past players, committee people, neighbouring leagues, football clubs; it's been amazing the support, it really has.
“So basically, we can start again pretty much as soon as we can, and put one foot in front of the other, for a start, and get through all the red tape that we're going to have to for a new building.
“We've already formed a subcommittee Saturday afternoon, that's a new build committee, and as of today, it's gone, demolished. There's nothing left.
“Last night (Tuesday) the last truckload of bricks and mortar were taken away and it’s almost a clean site, or will be in another day.
“Basically, what we need to do now is put a lot of temporary measures in place with changerooms, showers and toilets etc. So, there's going to be a lot of meetings in the upcoming weeks before we can get off the ground again and provide something for the players.”
Asked if the club would be ready to play home games at the start of the next season, Mr Shaw said he hoped so.
“There's a number of clubs that have reached out to us and said there’s facilities there for us and we do have a good relationship with the Tarwin Football Club. Tom Williamson was over a few days ago and said ‘our facilities are there for you’, as have a lot of other clubs.
“We hope we can have home games, we hope we've got some temporary measures in place. It’s far preferable if we can play on our own home ground.”
So, what has been lost?
“Well, every premiership cup for starters. We have a few remnants that look like salad bowls, that have been recovered through the rubble once the fire was out over Saturday night and Sunday. All the honour boards, you know, all that history.
“We’re lucky that one of the secretaries, Brenda Jordan, does have photos of all the honour boards. That's easy, they're replaceable, the cups and the memorabilia not so much.
“Probably the centrepiece of the football club was a premiership photo that dates back more than 100 years. It was on a massive, big timber shield with an individual photo of every player from the day, and a team photo. That's something that's really affected a lot of the older generation to know that’s gone, among other ones as well.
“So, they're the things you can't get back. That’s history, that’s just gone. We’ve got nothing to show for that.
“There’s the cup that we just won this year for the seniors and in the Under 17s netball, for example. We will go to a meeting of the Mid Gippsland Football League and ask if we can maybe have another one. And I think if we asked nicely, I reckon they’ll let us.
“That'll be our first, it'll be our rebuild cup, I’d say.”
Mr Shaw explained what happened to the cups.
“Some of the more modern-day ones, believe it or not are just tin, there's remnants of those, some of the tops of them. Some of the earlier ones that are made of probably 70/30 brass and a bit of silver in there, they are just destroyed, they melted. They just looked like a ball of lead has been dropped on the ground and lost all its shape.
“So yeah, some of the earlier ones from the 1930s and 40s. You can still see the shape of a couple of them, but the majority of what we collected out of the rubble would resemble maybe bits of eight or 10 trophies, I would say.”
But he’s hopeful that the community and football club people may be able to contribute some of the lost photos.
“A lot of people will have a lot of photos. They’ll come forward and we’ll try and piece them all together that way. Marg Smith, a club stalwart, always had a camera on hand, so she will have a lot of old photos that I’m sure she will let us have a look at and copy.”
As far as the GoFundMe page is concerned, Nick said it was going well beyond expectations.
“The generosity has been amazing from the general public, and people who have no involvement with our football club, as far away as Maffra, and beyond, who have chipped in to say they will sell raffle tickets for us. They’ve all been amazing.”
So it’s onwards and upwards for the glorious Fish Creek Kangaroos, but unlike all the premierships, it’s going to be no “cake walk” to get the club re-established again.
You can support the club through its GoFundMe crowd-funding site at: https://www.gofundme.com/f/our-wonderful-club-start-to-rebuild
