We are going to have a wonderful home-base when we get our new building in about a years time, everything will be better than it is now: bigger / better meeting spaces, bigger / better canteen-bar- kitchen set-up, brand new toilet-shower facilities, better located storage areas for our training gear, bigger gym, appropriate facilities for people with disabilities i.e. new wider staircase / new lift.

But here’s the problem guys. As of in a couple of weeks time, we are going to be a massive club that doesn’t have a home! Our pavilion will become a building site, replaced for the next twelve months by a few little ‘portable’ buildings (some toilet / shower areas, some changing space, a canteen), but that’s it! No great social space in which we can continue to enjoy the benefits of membership of FHC. The timeline is: Choosing the builder / establishing contracts / getting them on site: Oct – Nov: Demolition of all internal structures – throughout December, builder’s holidays the month of January, and in February the massive new renovation gets underway! It’s been estimated as a nine month building period from Feb forwards.

This next year will see a testing of our ‘social capital’, the spirit and commitment that underpins FHC. We’ll have to find other ways to socialize as a team / as a Club, other ways to conduct meetings, other ways to prepare for and then analyze elite level games. But our Club is not our building, it’s you and I and the other 600+ terrific people that call FHC ‘home’. Regardless of what confronts us next year, let’s all continue to enjoy the friendships and social connections that sport provides us with, let’s commit to be there to cheer on our club-mates, and let’s commit to get to social functions which will require us to go off-site. ‘Survive’ for a while, so that we  can ‘thrive’ thereafter!

Brendan Sheehan, Pavilion re-build sub-committee

Several weeks ago FHC received notification that it had been short-listed, along with two other clubs, for H.V.’s Community Club of the Year award. To the delight of our representatives at last week’s Hockey Victoria Annual Dinner and Awards Night, we were acknowledged as the winners and presented with a shield. This award was recognition of the hard work carried out by our Board, by the members who meet their annual volunteer commitments, and particularly by those members who go beyond the minimal requirements.

So a special ‘shout-out’ to all in our junior section who supported this year’s Welcome West Wagon Food for Asylum-Seekers Program  (Great job Trudy W), to Tung Le for leading our members support of several ‘outreach’ programs in Ho Chi Minh City, and for our continued expansion of the ‘Access All Abilities’ Program co-ordinated by Julie-Anne Sheehan (JA).

See below Julie-Anne’s thank-you to the FHC volunteers that have helped expand our wonderful AAA program.

Brendan Sheehan – Director Planning and Performance

‘In relation to Access All Abilities, which was a key component of our recognition, I would like to acknowledge the contribution of a number of individuals. Notably Georgia Cutrale, Josh Walsh and Ally Sheehan who participated in our initial collaboration with Scope Victoria. Subsequently, Sam Cutrale and Kirby Smith joined this group to facilitate the Northern Suburbs Special Schools Hockey Tournament and more recently Georgia Hopkins and Chris Provis-Vincent have provided hockey clinics in special school settings.

Next month Georgia Cutrale is hoping to receive enough expressions of interest to conduct a pilot after school program for students with special needs. It is anticipated that this could become a way to link young people, who have an interest in our sport, with a local organization that can support them.

‘While FHC continues to gain recognition for our on-field performances, it is certainly not at the expense of making our club an inclusive environment for all’.

Julie-Anne Sheehan – FHC Inclusion Ambassador