Good afternoon everyone and welcome to the 2023 season. I hope you have all had some sort of a break over Xmas/New Year and are getting ready for the new Football season.
There has been an enormous amount of work going on in the background over the summer break both on and off the field.
Over the summer break, the following changes have occurred at the OTGAFC:
· We congratulated Jamie Cassidy MacNamara on getting selected for Senior Coach at Coburg
· We welcome Donald MacDonald to Senior Coach at OTGAFC
· New Coaches to OTGAFC are Peter Sartori, Ivan Tudor, and we welcome back Dean Peters and Andrew White
· New executive committee members, Dan McNab as Secretary and Paul Lindsay as Treasurer, as well as Ben Smith helping in the Treasury portfolio. We also thank Frans Van Schilt for all his hard work and efforts in those before mentioned roles, Frans has stepped down from committee.
· A new Social committee has been established with Enakshi Rodrigo-Undugodage in the head role.
· New merchandise will arrive in a few weeks’ time, including new Jumpers for the whole Club, and we hope to have our Merchandise shop set up for both players and supporters to purchase OTGAFC apparel
Last year, the biggest feedback we received was that the whole community wasn’t always aware of what was happening within the club, and fingers crossed we have finally got our website active again, and it will be updated weekly with information on functions and how the teams are going. Our mailing list is back and running and you should be receiving regular newsletters.
Obviously the Club is now in B grade, but overall the Committee thinks this is a blessing in disguise, to reset both the football department and our off the field operations. We have a new major sponsor in Keep 5 Alive, and Saving Brothers, under the support of Phil Robison, but we need some more support in Sponsors/Benefactors, so if you have any thoughts of helping out, please speak to either myself, Miles Beamish or Layne Stretton
We are currently revisiting our Sponsorship packages available to the OTGAFC community, and thanks to the hard work of Henry Winter, have a new set of packages available. More on that later.
One of the striving factors that was discussed at the end of year review, was the lack of supporters at our home and away games, and how we could change this, and we will run a themed round for all our Senior home games this year, so we want to see as many of our supporters as possible at all our games.
Socially, we have already booked our 2023 Players Season launch, our Business lunch and our Best and Fairest awards night, so there will be plenty of advance notice for all of these functions. We will be having 4 President’s lunches as well as the School First 18 luncheon, and the Past Players luncheon. We’re also planning some afternoon teas in the lunch time break for our home games.
Once again, there will be plenty of notice letting you all know the dates of these events.
As mentioned before, since the OTGAFC is registered with the Australian Sports Foundation, which is a fundraising organisation that allows tax-deductible donations to Sport/Sporting Clubs , you can donate thru the ASF and that money comes to the Football club, please see me if you would like further clarification on this.
So now’s the time to get on board to show your support, whether it being coming along to watch our games, or coming along to the afternoon teas/President’s lunches as well as the functions organised.
Please sponsor a player, get to Bulleen and wear the OT’s gear.
Get active, it’s going to be a big year, please be a big part of it.
