ALONG with a lot of sports loving people of Bendigo, I feel a tinge of sadness today with the passing of the Bendigo Gold Football Club and I say that with the knowledge of “what could have been”.
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There are a number of “ifs” associated regarding this passing and earlier in the week the Bendigo Advertiser’s sports department alluded to some of them.
I believe way back at the start, if the club then known as the Bendigo Diggers had had the support of the council in the construction of social rooms their future prospects would have had blossomed. Instead a selfish minority of residents living within the precincts of the QEO, got the short-sighted council onside and the rest is history.
Then the Essendon Football Club came on board and through their newly appointed football operations manager with his gung-ho arrogant manner, immediately got on the wrong side of the local football community.
Instead of working harmoniously with the locals, the fledgling club had its back to the wall straight away.
The situation was never helped by the lack of “real football” people running a football club at local level and they were forever putting out the spot fires caused by “their man” on the ground.
Around this particular time I was part of the QEO Users group through my association with one of the clubs operating out of the QEO, and sometimes saw first hand this arrogant attitude towards the local sporting community.
The situation was not helped either by having a reserves team also drawing players from the local leagues around Bendigo and district.
Fast forward to today and after all of these intervening years, the Bendigo Gold had just about got it right. A lot of people like myself would often pass away a Sunday afternoon at the QEO watching them play.
They had a playing group of players that didn’t have an impact on local football but rather complemented it but most importantly they had some good quality, honest people working in the background.
I don’t know Aussie Jones personally but he appears to be a very genuine person. He always put Bendigo first and always treated the local community with respect.
Well done Aussie. Hopefully he will go onto bigger and greater things, and perhaps we as citizens of Bendigo learn something from this sad experience.
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