By JARROD POTTER
LIGHTNING will strike at Ikon Park later this year after Lyndhurst Football Netball Club was awarded a rare football experience with AFL side Carlton.
The flourishing Lightning – with teams in South East Juniors boys and girls and senior men’s football competitions as well as netball sides – was recognised for its great achievements on and off the field as the 2016 Foxtel Community Club of the Year.
The FOX FOOTY Club Rewards program – run by Foxtel, FOX FOOTY and the AFL Coaches Association – has just announced Lyndhurst as a winner of the Gold Tier prize to send 40 club members to the Carlton Football Club to experience ‘a day in the life of an AFL footballer’.
“It’s awesome and really surprising – we’re blown away by it really and haven’t had a lot of time to focus on it really,” Lyndhurst FNC president Andrew King said. “It’s been business as usual for us – getting stuff done with the seniors, juniors, Auskick and Youth Girls – but we’re really chuffed that we were recognised for this honour.”
Lyndhurst’s place in the community isn’t just on the sporting fields; the club has been active in the local community – getting right behind and myriad of charities, initiatives and campaigns, including Lace Up, The Fight Against Breast Cancer, The Beehive Foundation and Livvi’s Place.
Additionally, the club has been hugely proactive in aligning AFL Indigenous Round with their own home-and-away match, which sees the club connect holistically with elders of their local Boonwurrung tribe.
Regularly, various team members volunteer their time at two local schools to teach and mentor primary school children about fun in sport as well.
“It is part of our priority, our catch cry … is our club, our community,” King said. “Not something we rattle off because it sounds good, but that’s why we get involved with all those grassroots causes.
“One of our seniors is running from Queensland to Melbourne this year and we’re well and truly behind it as well – part of our DNA and what we do and part of what we do.
“We want to create sporting opportunities for kids in our area and then whatever we can do to help the community beyond that.”
It won’t just be the senior boys heading out to that day though as King said the club’s wide variety of players young, old, male and female will be selected for the special occasion.
“We’ll have a cross section there with a lot of our kids going out for the experience and our senior coaching staff as well to see the state of the art facilities and see how the elite people go about doing their thing,” King said.
The club will also have two members tour the FOX FOOTY studios during live filming of the channel’s prime-time shows and have eight members being invited as VIP guests to the end-of-season AFL Coaches Association dinner.
Lyndhurst is the second south eastern club to be presented with this prize in 2016, after Pakenham was given a day at St Kilda’s Seaford base earlier this year.
