2008 International Cup: one year to go

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2008 International Cup: one year to go

Authored by: Peter Armstrong
on Wednesday, September 19 2007 @ 12:04 pm ACST

Aaron, I am glad you were able to experience the unique charactor of BHNFC and our partners at Elgar Park.
We at BHNFC have never had much outside support for our drive to multiculural football. Whitehorse Council have been obstuctive towards all our plans to expand our club and improve our facilities. Amazingly they have given no support for our attempt to get local children and adults, who come from an Asian background, involved in Aussie Rules football. The Box Hill area is densley populated with people of Asian ethnicity.
Despite this we have grown from just a seniors and reserves team four seasons ago to now have seniors, reserves, two club 18 teams with an asian theme, u/19 (all in the VAFA) and a Supers over 35 team.

We, as you said, have young players come to us from Japan to be hosted by our members for a whole season under a scholarship program.
We tour Japan every year and play in the Narita Cup. While there we attempt to learn about the culture and history of Japan by visiting sites such as Osaka Castle, Temples and Hiroshima Peace Park. We also conduct a footy clinic at an Osaka Elementary School.

At last we have started to garner some interest and assistance from big players in the world of Aussie Rules. Football Victoria has been very encouraging and assisted in obtaining grants to develop our Asian influenced teams. Essendon football club through their Community Affairs Manager, Russell James, are providing publicity give aways for our trip to Japan. Our governing league, the VAFA, have been getting more and more involved in our push to expand. They have pledged to assist in all dealings we have with outside bodies in the future.

Box Hill North are completely committed to making the International Cup as successful as possible.
We would love nothing more than to host games for the 2008 IC.
There are some limitations we would need to overcome first.
Transport I don't think is a problem. Our ground is right alongside the Elgar Rd exit from the Eastern Freeway. This is at peak hour 20 mins from the centre of the city. At non peak times it is about 15 mins at worst. Several bus services run directly past our door from the city and two routes run past from Box Hill rail station. As most visiting teams travel by coach to their games this is not an issue.
At present, none of the FOUR ovals at Elgar Park are any bigger than Murphy Res.
The two ovals (S/E and S/W) situated side by side could be made suitable by just moving th goal posts. S/E ground could be made 6 mtrs longer than the Vermont FC ground (EFL), while the S/W ground has the potential to be made as wide as Box Hill City Oval and up to 15 mtr longer. So grounds could be made more than suitable.

There are 2 sets of change rooms for football at present. 2 teams could be housed in each, as was designed originally. However one set of rooms is presently serving exclusively as BHNFC social room. Showers rooms in this area are used as treatment and selection/board rooms.
Given our increase in teams we already are in desperate need of extra change rooms. We have on as our major drive, the building of new recreation facilities including bar and canteen areas.
If a miracle was to occur, and these improvements were all approved by the council and funding gained, we would love to host as many games of the International Cup as we could.
Our long term goal is not only to be a successful local football team and club. We wish to become the centre of International Football. We have long believed that Elgar Park is an ideal place to develop into something special for multicultural sport and health. We just have to convince a few more to see our vision.
We have a meeting planned for early November, with several representatives from AFL, Football Victoria, City of Whitehorse, VAFA and local polititions.
Hope springs eternal.

2008 International Cup: one year to go

Authored by: Aaron Richard
on Wednesday, September 19 2007 @ 02:12 pm ACST

I'd forgotten about the space between the driveway and the freeway, that
does indeed make four grounds next to each other - stick up your hand to
host a some games and you never know what'll happen.

Good to hear the drive the club is pushing to make itself a Melbourne base
for international footy. BHN has done a lot for spreading the word about
international footy in suburban circles with the matches against Japan and
New Zealand and the Vietnamese connection.

With a bit of luck, BHN, the Vietnam Swans and the Elgar Park Dragons can
get together to start some serious development with Vietnamese in Vietnam,
as has been mooted in the past.

Let us know how developments continue this year.

2008 International Cup: one year to go

Authored by: Brett Northey
on Wednesday, September 19 2007 @ 02:34 pm ACST

We've mentioned BHN several times before for their great work, but that post on BHN's development work and plans fills the details in much more and was worthy of a story in itself! Great to see an Australian footy club with such vision.

Don't forget to add worldfootynews.com to your links section (or even better one of our smaller logos on your front page, logos found here: Downloads & Multimedia.... just a thought).

Certainly sounds like BHN should be considered for at least some games to showcase international footy in the area - would be great potential to get a community turn out, giving the matches the crowds they deserve and furthering the push of footy into "non-traditional" markets.

---
Brett Northey - Co-founder and Chief Editor of WFN

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