President Jimmy Ware on what was 2023 for CFNC!

Dear Saints and Sinners!

Season’s greetings to each and every one of you.
What a year for the club it’s been! It’s hard to know where to start.
A bit about what we have been up to at the club in the season that was ’23…

On the field

We have been busy this off season, with the boys going hard for new recruits and boy oh boy have they done that! Starting with one of the biggest names in Gippsland football Keenan Hughes, recruiting Haydyn Hector from Traralgon who will be an absolute beast. Also branching out East Gippsland way landing Alex Saunders, R.J, Zac Tactor, plus about a half dozen young lads from around the area.
There is another couple to add to the list that we haven’t mentioned for various reasons but they won’t be far off being announced so sit tight!
A huge thank you to all the recruitment boys but a special thanks to Hegs, Jenno and Mick on making this happen.

Jase Eenjes has taken on the thirds again for the second year alongside young Brady Hood and our veteran big Donny Veale in which they are doing a fantastic job so far with, having got a fair chunk of the team already and some new young promising players the year will see much improvement for the boys.

Mick McNulty will be taking the reins again in the reserves, with the new injection of players there will be a big amount of competition for spots and the team will be much more competitive. He has also taken the reins of head of Football which as you can see above with recruitment, he is doing a fantastic job alongside Hegs and Jenno.

Having recruited well with some youth and experience we are expecting really good things come ’24. Our goal is to build sustained success on the field, to give ourselves every chance to fight for premiership number 13 and we believe the off field coaching appointments and recruits are giving us every opportunity to do that.

On the court

Abbey Playdell has taken the role of the A grade coach coming from Maffra.
A young coach, full of energy we are extremely excited to bring her out to the Warr this year. Coming from the system of Maffra she will be able to help guide the girls in what it takes to be successful and will help propel us back up the ladder.
To say we are excited with this appointment would be absolutely underselling this and we can’t wait to see what she does come ’24! Watch out North Gippy!

Other coaches have been finalised and will be released in the coming weeks.
A big thank you to Kirsten and Jo for their tireless effort in finding these coaches.

Off the Field/Court

It’s been another massive year off the Field/Court:

Crown Raffle- Great establishment, great food and drinks and even better people! What more could we say then about moving home to the Crown! The raffle has been a roaring success and we can’t thank everyone there enough for the support they have given us!
Make sure if you are free on a Friday, get on down it’s a great night!

Major Raffle – What a day this was. After taking what we thought was a monumental task of pulling this off, the whole club got behind this and what come of it was such a great outcome. Thank you to everyone who helped make this happen. A massive shout out to Anthony Barrett, John Burt and Dan Erderly who put in a mountain of work behind the scenes.
Congratulations to Jake Wills on winning the new motorbike he loved it!

Saints and Sinners draw- Butchy has done a fantastic job with the Saints and Sinners for another year. Keeping everyone up to date with the news at the club whilst also picking a lucky punter to win $500 each week. Keep up the good work with this one Butch!

Bingo- Bingo has started off great guns! We are about 10 weeks in and we think we have a great place and setup for Bingo. We would like to thank Shane Wilkenson for helping to get this off the ground and all the helpers that make the night run as smoothly as possible. Also, a big thank you to Frank and the Latrobe Valley Racing club for having us up there working with us in partnership, it’s a great venue and the LVRC has been extremely accommodating to us.

Traralgon Rodeo

We were lucky enough to be asked to run the Bar and Parking at the Traralgon Rodeo again. To say it was a great day last year would be an understatement. The day was well organised by the Rodeo committee and went off without a hitch.
Unfortunately, this year has been postponed, we wait to see when another date is chosen!

Sponsorship

Headed by the ever-energetic Keran Doepel sponsorship this year was a substantial increase in sponsorship revenue from the year before.
We welcomed on board the Crown Hotel in Traralgon as a Major Partner, holding our Friday night Raffles there.
CPS/Chromagen stayed on again as a Major Sponsor for the year for the second year running. They are a great supporter of the Cowwarr Football Netball club and we can’t thank them enough.
Many of our long-time sponsors stayed on board, whilst also welcoming many new sponsors to join the ranks. We would like to thank all of our established and new sponsors for their generosity and support.

In exciting news for the club, we welcome Nethercote Agricultural Contracting (3 years) as well as WFI insurance (2 years) in becoming Major Sponsors from 2024.
Having businesses like these is a great show of faith in the club, the direction we are heading and we thank them for their support.
A special mention to Brett Matthews for helping to organise this, he has put in a lot of work and energy behind the scenes.

Grants

We have been fortunate enough to land some grants for the club that we are much appreciative of.

We have secured a grant for a new shed to the value of $10,000 from the FRRR.
A shed is something we have been keen on for a long time and to get it half paid for by the FRRR is fantastic so a big shout out to the people from there!

Through the council we have secured multiple grants ranging from fencing of the new playground, re carpeting the social rooms and a new cool room. The council have been fantastic to us and we really value the support from the wellington shire!

A huge shout out to Hayley Cameron on heading up our grants she is red hot on these and we wouldn’t be in this situation without her.

I would like to thank all our volunteers for all the hard work you have all put in we couldn’t run this great club without you! Especially our committee, each and every one of you have been fantastic to work with and I can’t wait for the year ahead.
I would like to wish all our saints and sinners a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Stay safe and healthy and we look forward to what should be a cracking 2024!
GO SAINTS!

Download the full report here: President-Wind-up-for-2023.pdf