Making it happen: Representatives from Girgarre FNC, Campaspe Shire Council, Bendigo Bank Rushworth branch and Enel at the unveiling of the new netball lights. Photos: Aidan Briggs
Photo by
Aidan Briggs
Girgarre Football Netball Club netballers will no longer be in the dark at training, with brand new lights installed at the club’s netball courts.
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The project, which was five years in the making, was officially opened last week, much to the delight of project co-ordinator Brendan Nicholson.
“Five years ago the council came to us for the project to redevelop the tennis courts and netball courts, the training courts, and redo them completely,” he said.
“(They were going to) pull down the existing lights and put up new lights and everything else, all paid for by council, which we obviously jumped at the opportunity.
“The project was a bit mismanaged, and the budget went well, well over, and so council in their wisdom just pulled the light component of the project out and did the rest of it and left us with no lights.
“We were left with one lit court for eight grades of netball.”
With just one functional court to train on during Tuesday and Thursday sessions, the club campaigned for adequate lighting, but after numerous conversations back and forth, eventually decided to manage and fund the project themselves.
“We had a fair discussion then with council, and council were of the opinion that was all that we required,” Nicholson said.
“It took a lot of time negotiating and working through to get to a point where we were able to fund the project ourself, operate the project ourself, as in manage it.
“We went out and found our own money, and with $50,000 we put the lights up.”
Shining bright: Girgarre netballers at the official opening of the new lights for their netball courts.
Photo by
Aidan Briggs
The six new lights installed are up to training standard, illuminating three netball courts and the rest of the netball training facility, although the first proper training session under lights is still a few weeks away.
“They (the netballers) really haven’t been under it because of daylight saving,” Nicholson said.
“The test will really be in two weeks’ time once daylight saving finishes, but they are very grateful.
“It’s been a very challenging time for our club to go that five-year period with only one lit court.
“We’ve got four grades of senior netball and four grades of junior netball; it’s a lot of girls, so we’ve been rotating times and nights and all that sort of things, but it does make it extremely difficult.
“We probably spent, I’d say, somewhere in the realms of around $5000 over that period mucking around with temporary lights and bits and pieces to try and at least facilitate something that we can train under.
“So yeah, it’s been very disappointing from our end, but I suppose the upside is we finally got there.”
The official opening of the lights was attended by Campaspe Shire Mayor Rob Amos, with council having offered some funding to the project; however, Nicholson said the project was really enabled by local businesses.
“Council did, in the end, co-contribute an amount of money to it. We certainly found the bulk of it, but they did find a bit to help us along,” he said.
“It was a partnership with a couple of other businesses, the Bendigo Bank Rushworth branch, and Enel, the guys that are doing the big solar farm out the road.
“They were the people that actually allowed us to get the money to be able to do what we had to do.”
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