People power: How Springvale Districts has become a model community football-netball club

They don’t have juniors.

And they don’t have the greatest facilities in the Southern league.

But what Springvale Districts Demons do have, club elder Tony Cooper points out, is many good people.

They are comfortably Districts’ greatest asset, he says.

Cooper has started to put a few things in place for the club’s end-of-season presentation this month.

As he compiled a list of volunteers to acknowledge on the night, he was struck by the number of them.

“That’s one of our strengths, we do have a lot of people who will do their bit,’’ he says.

“We have a little bit of a mantra of asking people not what they can’t do, but what they can do. If they can do one thing for us, that’s great. There are people who will fill a role for us. They’ll do it to the best of their ability and they’ll take ownership of it.

“We’ve also got people who have stuck with us through the bad times, which inevitably come, and they enjoy the good times.’’

For a long time, Springvale Districts have had the same person doing meals at the club on Thursday nights.

It’s David Hall. Newcomers to the club might know him only as the smiling gentleman who puts food on their plates.

He happened to win three best and fairests at Districts, coach them to three premierships and is an official club legend. Long after his retirement, he’s still chipping in, by hook or by cook.

This Sunday, Springvale Districts play in the Division 1 finals of the Southern league for the first time, the highest level they have reached since being established as Springvale CYMS in 1961, an offshoot of St Joseph’s Primary School.

It’s a tremendous achievement for a club that five years ago was in Division 3 and is the only Division 1 affiliate without junior sides (in multicultural Greater Dandenong particularly, under-age footballers are in short supply).

Districts have already enjoyed some success this season, winning their first netball premiership last Saturday.

The netball division started six years ago and now has eight teams.

Cooper says its introduction has been “enormous’’ to Districts, “for no other reason than the critical mass of people it gives us’’.

“It’s given us two really high-calibre people on the executive: Deb Thompson, the netball president, and Katherine Jackson, who is our finance director and an accountant by trade,’’ he says.

“We’ve got a level of professionalism we haven’t had in the past. We haven’t tapped the potential of the netball. Until we get the courts here, we’ve hardly scratched the surface of what netball can be at Springvale Districts.’’

The club is working towards junior netball sides, as well as women’s football.

More pressing is the need to have unpaid access to the main social club at Newcomen Road Reserve.

Districts have to make do in the “Back Bar’’, a room that over the years has taken on legendary status in Springvale sports circles but is far too small to accommodate Springvale Districts’ growth into what many regard as a model community club.

Cooper and football club president Greg Scott say Districts are mindful of their ties with the local community.

In the off-season, footballers and netballers players drop into the Lexington Gardens aged care centre off Westall Rd and sit with residents.

“They just talk about old times … some of the people there are really lonely,’’ Scott says. “It’s around mental health.’’

Most of the club sponsors this year are local companies and organisations, headed by Springvale RSL.

The RSL is on the other side of the train line running parallel to Newcomen Rd but in every other respect it is on Springvale Districts’ side.

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Deb Thompson is the sister of Springvale Districts senior coach Kris Thompson and stalwart player Matt Thompson.

There are many family threads in the club’s fabric.

In Springvale at least, Coopers are more associated with football than good beer.

Brothers Tony, John, Stephen and David all played for Districts, and their father, Bob, attained life membership in recognition of his many years as a volunteer.

John’s son, Tom, figured in the 2018 senior premiership and his daughter, Alana, played netball.

Tony’s lad Angus, 17, recently made his senior debut. His daughter, Lily, is involved in the netball.

Tony Cooper won a best and fairest, was senior coach, a long-standing secretary and is an official legend of Springvale Districts.

John Martin holds the same status. Martin got involved in 1976 when his eldest son, David, started playing football at age seven.

His other boys, Chris and Anthony, also put on the boots.

John Martin played one game for Districts, when they were short in the reserves.

But he turned out to be a long-serving president and committee member after “making the mistake of going to an AGM’’.

“They were looking for a secretary,’’ he recalls.

“I said, ‘I’ll try’. The bloke who had been secretary said to me, ‘Look, John, I’ve got to go to the dentist, here’s the paperwork I’ve got, I’ll contact you in the next day or so’. I never saw or heard from him again!’’

Chris Martin is also a life member of the club.

David Hall is another enshrined legend.

His son, Jason, won a best and fairest and was club captain, and David’s brother, Peter, was a three-club champion.

Then there’s the Burns clan. Allan and Wendy Burns were given “life’’ and their son, Rob, a courageous, classy and durable player, is a legend.

The family presence at Newcomen Rd continues through Allan and Wendy’s grandson, Billy Green, in football and their granddaughter, Jordyn, in netball.

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Steve Hughes coached suburban football power Noble Park to a senior premiership last year.

He got his start in coaching at Springvale Districts, from 2006 to 2009.

“What sort of club was it? It was full of good people, honest, hard-working, fun to be around and didn’t take themselves too seriously,’’ Hughes says.

“That included players and committee, players like Robbie Burns and Adam Champion and committee people like Tony Cooper and Douggie Pearce, rest his soul. Yeah, full of good people, Districts.’’

Did they have any money?

“I know I didn’t get paid much!’’ he chortles. “But it was my first senior job and I’ll be forever grateful.’’

He can remember Cooper and Pearce interviewing him in the social club after he applied for the coaching position.

“I walked in thinking I knew everything but I didn’t know much at all, to be honest,’’ Hughes says.

Cooper and Pearce picked a future premiership coach: Hughes guided Districts to the Division 2 flag in his second season, in the process forming a great rivalry with neighbouring Dingley.

They didn’t last long in Division 1, yet 15 years later under Kris Thompson, they’re preparing for an elimination final against Port Melbourne Colts in the top section of a competition that has improved considerably in the past decade.

Is Hughes surprised? No.

“If you’ve got good people in the important roles in a footy club, results typically take care of themselves,’’ he says.

“And they’ve had them in spades for at least a couple of decades as far as I’m aware.’’

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Like Steve Hughes, Kris Thompson played junior football at Noble Park.

He had two years in the Under 18s but as he went into the seniors, “I didn’t really feel welcome, to be honest’’.

“I knew a couple of guys who were here (Districts), so I came across. I’m still here,’’ he says.

After a stint as an assistant at VFL club Frankston, Thompson took over as Springvale Districts’ senior coach midway through the 2017 season.

Results immediately improved but Districts, despite having six wins, took the drop to Division 3 (Tony Cooper is adamant it was the best team in football history to be relegated).

Under the presidency of club great Sean Francis, the Demons promptly won the premiership to get back into Division 2. They gained entry to Division 1 after going 12-0 in the 2021 season that was eventually called off because of Covid.

Thompson says the seeds of the rise were sown at a 2018 pre-season camp in Portsea.

“We had honest chats over a couple of beers. We wrote up how the club was viewed on the outside and what we wanted to be and what needed to change,’’ he says.

He says everyone agreed that Districts were seen as a good bunch of fellows who liked a good time but didn’t take football too seriously.

“We weren’t respected for what we did on the field,’’ Thompson says.

Without any juniors coming through as one-point players, Springvale Districts have established a squad good enough to see in September.

The retention of players is a strength of the club, Thompson says.

“That’s the key. It’s no good bringing in five if you’re also losing five because you’re back to where you started,’’ he says.

“We believe the culture we’ve created means no one wants to leave.’’

This season they brought in multiple Narre Warren premiership player Dylan Quirk (whose father, Melbourne plaster king Jason, is a former Demon) and a group of Gippslanders headed by Daniel Helmore.

Thompson doesn’t hold up Districts as world-beaters.

“We don’t have heaps of stars. We’ve got a lot of guys who have a crack and their roles are really clear. That’s all they have to do, play their role.’’

With quite a few players out, Springvale Districts knocked over reigning premier Cranbourne by five points in round 16.

Last Saturday, they defeated the always-strong St Paul’s for the second time this season, finishing with an eight-goal flourish in the final quarter.

John Martin loves the way the team plays.

“This mob, you’ve never got ’em. They just keep coming,’’ he says.

Scott believes that the club appreciates its wins more than the opposition, “just because we know how much harder we have to work for them’’.

Springvale Districts had enough players to field three teams this year. There are more than 80 players on the list.

In 2017, they had to fish drinkers out of the pub to make up numbers in the reserves.

Changes have come off the field, too.

Springvale Districts do not have a traditional committee structure.

Scott is president of football, Deb Thompson president of netball, and there is a finance director and various sub-committees.

Tony Cooper oversees them as chair; he says he sometimes has to remind himself of his title as he cleans the toilets!

Cooper says Springvale Districts are not BHP “but we’re not ma and pa on the corner store either’’.

“We’re a mature club with a good history,’’ he says.

And many good people, too.

SPRINGVALE DISTRICTS

Formed: 1961

Affiliation: Southern Football Netball League

Senior football premierships: 1974, 1983, 1985, 1988, 1989, 2007, 2018

Club legends: Rob Burns, Geoff Brunsma, Tony Cooper, David Hall, John Martin

Senior coach: Kris Thompson

Division 1 finals squad: Dylan Quirk, Mason Russell (captain), John Walker, Zane Merdanovic, Nick Gay, Jamie Nguyen, Georgie Angelopoulos, Daniel Spence, Cory Hutchinson, Toby Arms, Matt Wetering, Alex Derzekos, Stefan Feehan, Shakore Bragg-Taylor, Darcy Warke, Liam Hamilton, Liam Giove, Daniel Helmore, Drew Stockton, Matthew Blair, Fraser Dostine, Billy Green, Mitchell Dewar, Brody Ledder, Adam Read, Peter Heng