Despite a turbulent winter with plenty of hurdles and uncertainties, the Hills Hawks Football Club completed another successful season, the 51st in the local club’s proud history. Despite a substantial delay to proceedings while the state was in lockdown, the season got under way a few weeks late and enjoyed good weather for the most part, coupled with unusually green fields (due to the long break between sporting seasons)!
The club acted quickly to put in place a series of Covid-safe measures including hand sanitising stations, safety guidelines for training and game days, QR-code scans for all arrivals at Hayes Park and pedestrian traffic requirements for everyone entering the grounds. Ground marshalls were present at all training and matches to ensure that rules were being adhered to. The club was very proud of the way that the community rallied behind these measures and helped us keep football going for the kids and adults alike, and is glad to report that the overwhelming majority of people were mindful of the rules and supportive of the measures that the club needed to instigate to keep the game open.
This past season also saw the club employ the highly regarded professional soccer coaching organisation T3 for the first time, who ran coaching programs for our U5 through to U11 teams. The program proved to be very successful and popular, with each team being mentored by a professional trainer every week at Hayes Park. The program continued even during lockdown, with the great people at T3 quickly adapting their methods and creating a virtual coaching program for the kids, which was widely supported online. The club is also quite proud to say that – with a substantial amount of planning and safety procedures in place – our canteen stayed open throughout the active part of the season, and is still widely regarded as the best in the local game.
Behind the scenes, the club remained very active during lockdown with a new website build, which is optimised for mobile viewing and will allow coaches and managers to create their own team pages complete with match reports, approved video content and images. There is also more room to support our wonderful sponsors with bigger logos, and potential for uploading video material. The club’s Facebook page also continues to flourish, so please do pop over to take a look if you’re new to the club – or click “Like” if you’re already a part of our community.
Speaking of sponsors we are, as always, deeply grateful for the commitments that ours make each season, and acknowledge the significant role they play in keeping our proud club going strong. Likewise, to the wonderful people who put their hand up at the start of each season to coach or manage a team, the game simply could not keep going without your support. Equally, we would like to thank the parents who support their childrens’ development by participating in the great game of soccer, as well as each and every player who registered to be a part of another successful season.
Special mentions go out to our U21 Division 1 side, and our U14s who both made it all the way to their respective grand finals, which was a fantastic effort.
The club is looking forward to another strong showing in 2021, and would love to welcome new players to our great community. Please visit the website or email us to register for season 2021, we have teams all the way from Under 5s through to Over 45s, as well as thriving men’s (Over 35s) and women’s six-a-side social competitions which are held at Hayes Park each Saturday after the kids finish up.
We look forward to seeing you all in season 2021!
