Business of footy

By Bridget Brady and Lia Bichel
CASEY chambers of commerce want to utilise the status of the Melbourne Football Club (MFC) to boost membership numbers and increase trading in the municipality.
The hopes come as MFC met Casey chamber and business leaders at Casey Fields on Tuesday, in what football manager Chris Connolly described as a “historic meeting”.
MFC commercial partnerships manager Scott Macdonald said the club shared the chambers’ enthusiasm to develop a good business relationship with traders.
“The Melbourne Football Club is hell-bent and genuine about creating a good business relationship in Casey,” Mr Macdonald said.
As reported in the News last week, the AFL club, Casey Scorpions and the City of Casey finalised a 30-year deal to see MFC train at Casey Fields in Cranbourne East once a week during the football season and form a relationship with the local community.
Cranbourne Chamber of Commerce (CCC) president Judy Davis said she was ecstatic to hear the deal had been finalised. “Without the community our businesses would not be able to survive. I’m very excited about this,” she said.
Narre Warren Chamber of Commerce president Bob Burns said MFC could “open doors that we can’t”.
Since 2007, Mr Burns said membership had grown from four to 43 members and hoped the numbers would continue to soar with the new MFC relationship. “They can give us access to larger businesses that don’t deal with us currently,” Mr Burns said.
Sue Neale from Women Making it Work said she was also excited about the prospects.
“If we can have some association with your club we can leverage off your status,” she said.
But Mr Macdonald said the benefits would be mutual. “With your support we can grow to become a much more powerful club than we are now,” he said.
MFC players “love a coffee” and were keen to find the coffee hot spots in the area.“After training the players jump in their cars and head home again but they want suggestions of places they can go.”
Mr Macdonald said it would be great to see MFC players donning their red and blue on Casey streets or in businesses.
Mr Macdonald said the meeting was only a starting point and more specific plans with traders would be made in the future.