Registrations are now open.

Click the link under “Registration” and follow the instructions (available as a PDF download).  Note that this year coaches need to register as well as players.

Credit card payments are also available via the online registration system.

New to the club?  Not sure how it all works?  Come to our information day (Sunday 12th Feb 11am to 2pm) and find out.  All of the people who make the club work will be down at our Wattletree Rd club rooms (just behind the synthetic pitch) so all of your questions can be answered.  Registrations are now done online so although we cannot register your child we can assist you in explaining how it all works.

We have football programs for children as young as 3 years old and we are also a strong girls football club (one of only a handful of Melbourne clubs to field all girls teams in U9 & U11).

As the 5th biggest football club in Victoria we are well placed to give your child a wonderful football experience in 2012.

GO REDBACKS !!!

Brendan Mulcahy with the Kavieng United FC he coached for a month (Click for full size)

By Brendan Mulcahy

Whilst many Australians associate the country of Papua New Guinea with violence and crime, as depicted frequently in the media, in fact the land of the bird of paradise is a place of beautiful scenery and beautiful people.  So what better place to play “the beautiful game”?

In September this year I chose to undertake my final year, 5-week medical elective placement in the North Eastern islands of PNG, assisting at the Kavieng General Hospital in the capital of the PNG province of New Ireland.   I am finishing my final year of my medical degree at Monash University and am permitted to organise a medical elective anywhere in the world.

It was the activities outside of the local hospital that allowed me the best opportunity to engage with the local community.  Having been an Eltham Redbacks centre forward for 5 years and top goal scorer for both club and league in 2010, it was the local football (or in Papua New Guinea “soccer”) culture that proved a common language in a foreign land.

Each Sunday a crowd would gather around the local soccer field to cheer on and support the dozens of local senior men’s and women’s football teams.  The competition was much better organised than I had expected to find in PNG, as both rugby and AFL are also very popular codes.  One of the clubs invited me to join their weekly training, and armed with a bag of equipment donated by the Redbacks including training bibs, cones and balls, I coached their senior men’s team for over a month.  Kavieng United Football Club fields two senior men’s teams and one woman’s team each weekend across 3 different leagues.  ‘Alfred’ the Head Coach has up to 40 senior players under his instruction at any one time.  Without floodlighting the teams can only train between 5pm when the players finish work and 6pm when daylight fades, so to allow themselves enough hours of training each week, they train Monday to Thursday, with a game each Sunday afternoon.

There is fantastic raw talent amongst the young men of Papua New Guinea, the same inbuilt athleticism we come to expect of Australia’s own indigenous youth.  But limited resources including a lack of balls, basic equipment and facilities restricts football from reaching its true potential in PNG.  The young men usually train either in thongs or bare foot, saving the rare and expensive soccer boots for weekend matches.  However, with the introduction of even the most basic training equipment including cones to mark out training drills and bibs to divide the players, one Redbacks striker was able to improve the tackling, possession football and finishing so much over the month that on my final weekend in Kavieng, the men’s team played the league leaders and defeated them 7-5 in a thrilling match that stayed close, with scores tied at 3-3, until after half-time when United blew the league title race wide open with by taking an insurmountable 7-3 lead with 15 minutes to play.  And at the end of 90 minutes, to the roar of the local spectators and against a backdrop of lush tropical jungle, for the 11 men of Kavieng United Football Club, the win over their local rivals felt as good as winning any professional competition anywhere else in the world.

The Victorian Champions League is well under way now with Round 3 just completed. Club members will be delighted to know that the Eltham Redbacks has very good representation at our local club the North East Diamonds in both the coaching and playing ranks.

A big congratulations to the following players and coaches at the Diamonds:

Players
U13 Girls – Zoe Houghton, Keely Lockhart & Eleanor Wiley
U14 Boys – Charlie Bosjnak-Hudson & Patrick O’Connor
U15 Boys – James Ignatidis
U17 Boys – Max Cornford

Coaches
Head Zone Coach – Vaughan Coveny
U14 Boys – Head Coach – Jason Czorny
U14 Boys – Assistant Coach – Andrew ‘Kenta’ Kentapozidis
U14 Boys – Team Manager – Simon Garlick
Goalkeeper coach – Santo Dell`Aquila

This is a really great effort and representation in the Diamonds from our club and we look forward to keeping tabs on these teams over the summer so good luck with the remainder of the summer season!

Also, a big congratulations to one of our talented players Angus Wiley who was recently selected for the FFA Skill Acquisiton Program. This is a huge achievement for Angus and for our club, being selected  from a large group of talented 8 to 11 year old players for this program (Angus is 10yo this year).

Well done to all of these players and coaches on their achievements!

Runner-up Player’s Player of the year and commitee member Pinky knew enough Japanese to get someone to take  a happy snap of him at Shimizu S-Pulse vs. Nagoya, J-League game at the Outsourcing Stadium, Nihondaira last week!

Unfortunately the Redback is the colours of Nagoya (the visiting team) so I think the guy to his left can’t quite work out what’s going on with a Shimizu supporter taking the photo.

Has the Redback been somewhere we should know about? Email a pic and a description to admin@elthamredbacksfc.org.au and we’ll get you proudly displaying the Eltham colours up on our website pronto!

Congratulations to Matthew Rottura – raffle winner of the Vaughan Coveny autographed football!