Footscray Hockey Club

FHC dominate Western Wildcats Selections
The Footscray Junior Section has broken its Western Wildcats player rep total for the fifth consecutive year. A massive 36 children have been selected, plus two further players have been named as ‘train-ons’ and are therefore emergencies for their Wildcats teams. The Wildcats teams will be training each Sunday from now until the State Championships in July and will then contest four games across that first week of the school holidays.

To underscore our current status, we also have a record number of FHC coaches with Wildcats appointments. Congratulations to Hernie Isorena, Les McAlinden, Mohammed (Fidz) Hafidz, Geoff Peacock and Lisa Anderson. Team Manager positions have been awarded to Piere Scott and Barry Allan. Thanks also go to the people that represented FHC as Wildcats selectors – Alex Grosz, Daryl Jahnke, Barry Allan, Anne Robinson and Lisa Anderson. Mark White and Heather Shaw are the mainstays behind the regional organisation of the Wildcats this year and are doing a fantastic job this far.

And the biggest thank-you goes to the people that give up hundreds of hours a year to make these kids the best that they can be – our outstanding group of junior team coaches at FHC. Take a bow all of you!

The children selected this year are:
Holly Azzopardi, Mahalia Bailey, Annalise Bettiol, Olivia Colasurdo, Melanie Corless, Georgia Hopkins, Chelsea Pugh, Ebony Pugh, Isabelle Skilbeck, Stephanie Thompson, Oscar Allan, Reid Sargent, Peter Wroblewski, Nicola Hancock, Ahried Isorena, Hayley McAlinden, Melissa Morton, Amy Scott, Joanna White, Tayla Williams, Tyson Breen, Riley Damnics, William Leeder, Angus Robinson, Vinny Sharma, Sarah Breen, Sheridan Corless, Ellen Druce, Caitlin Duggan, Gabrielle Lewis, Shannara Main, Ally Sheehan, Neil Duncan, Weston Howell, Patrick Meaney and Morgan Stephens. Trainons are Georgia Cutrale and Liam Braithwaite.

Several children were very unlucky to miss out, but our recent track record shows that our kids make it to representative honors eventually if they keep working at their game.

Coaching
Our coaches are certainly not resting on their laurels though. Last week former international star and Aussie assistant coach Jim Irvine was here running the first of two best-practice coaching strategy sessions with our coaches. Jim returns Wednesday week (May 27) to run his follow-up session on specific skill teaching.

Player Safety
Whilst we are determining our protocols for the use of the Junior Training Area, could all junior players be aware that they are responsible for the safety of younger children that they might be sharing the area with. We have already had one very unfortunate accident in there and that’s one too many.

Most of the Junior teams (non Shield teams) do not have badged umpires allotted to their games. Most of the home games are covered by Graeme Veitch, but we have a problem with the away games particularly U17 Girls North, U15 Girls North and U15 West Mixed. Junior teams cannot afford the situation where the coach has to take to the field to umpire. Is there anyone who may be able to help us out—teams may be able to cover the cost of petrol for any willing volunteers? Please contact Steve Pattie steve.pattie@dsto.defence.gov.au