After more than a century, a proud country football and netball club is folding. Its demise tells a bigger story about rural Australia.
The night before Quambatook Football and Netball Club's final ever home-and-away game, two men found themselves in the clubrooms, engaged in good-natured, if occasionally strained, debate.The club's young president, Rhys Carmichael, insisted it should be delivered by Malcolm "Dasher" Knight, a club legend several decades his senior.Knight objected. The speech, he argued, should instead fall to the 27-year-old football playing president, Carmichael.
Her parents, both life members of the club, would pick her up afterwards, and often headed to the pub in town for a midweek meal."It is a very special place to me," she said.The story of Quambatook Football and Netball Club's sad demise is repeated throughout small communities in rural Australia."The reality is, we're not the only club in this situation."The pandemic and its costly economic and social effects have seen sporting clubs around the country shuttered.
For many of those older residents, the club is the town's connective tissue. It transforms the idea of community from the abstract to something tangible, something touchable."A lot of the older blokes in town come here to have a few beers on Thursday night and catch up and fill in the days doing a few little odd jobs," Carmichael said.A album featuring photos from Quambatook's 1997 premiership win.Kellie Burmeister's dad is one of those older blokes.
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