A suspicious fire has gutted the clubhouse of one of Victoria’s oldest and most successful country football teams, taking with it more than 100 years of irreplaceable memorabilia.
The double-storey Fish Creek Football Netball Club was a smouldering shell on Saturday morning as devastated locals surveyed the damage.Club co-president Ray Stefani was working on his dairy farm when a member sent him a photo of the blaze at 5am.
Honour boards are gone, trophies as well. The team’s 37 premiership flags were luckily in sealed containers within a concreted office downstairs. Stefani is confident they’ll be safe.“Everything else is gone,” he said. “It’s just devastating for everyone. The football netball club here is the heartbeat of the town.”
“It was very uplifting. We’re going to need that passion because we’ve got a bit of a road ahead of us now,” Stefani said.in 2016 amid predictions it may last only another three or four years. It has since made a comeback, with an influx of people from Melbourne boosting both player and volunteer numbers.
Eighteen footballers down, the club began calling former players to field both reserves and seniors for that weekend’s matches.“It was amazing. The president was in shock. It was purely on spirit and that’s the base of this club.”
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