You are here: Home / Media / More than your average footy club

More than your average footy club

The new breed of inner city residents, who sit outside a café drinking their skim milk lattes, think that they are living the village life and have a great sense of community spirit. The true long-time locals will know that the inner city will never be a village made up of families who send their kids out of district for schooling and don’t participate in supporting their local sporting teams reports Perry Johnstone in the South Sydney Herald of May 2009.

For 60 years the Alexandria Rovers have provided a safe haven for boys and girls of the inner city of all ages, races, creeds and colours to play sport in a friendly family environment, along the way learning such important life skills as team work, discipline, respect for themselves and each other, physical fitness and racial tolerance, to name just a few.

A youngster may come from a broken home, but once they belong to the Alexandria Rovers they belong to a giant family.

It was the Alexandria Rovers Football Club that formed and started Alexandria Erskineville Bowling Club many years ago. The principal of community support and community living was alive and well before the villages became a prominent catch cry.

It was that same community spirit which saw the club recently donate money to the bushfire victims and the flood victims which ravaged the communities of Queensland and Victoria a month or so ago.

The current committee is made up of people who all grew up in the area and were educated in the area. They all still work and live in the area and most importantly are giving back to their local community as volunteers. These same people are looked upon as being boofy footy heads by the new breed.

Hopefully next time when the new breed of village dwellers are ordering their lattes they will look around and see if the proprietors are supporting their local club or are they putting the profits into their wallets? I’m sure the answer can be written on the back of a Rose Bay School report card!

For all the latest news on the Alexandria Rovers, log onto www.alexandriarovers.com.au

Source: South Sydney Herald May 2009 www.southsydneyherald.com.au