SOCCER

BAXTER has achieved Gold Level status in the Skilled Workplace program run by Mental Health First Aid Australia.

Bryan Jeffrey from MOAT Mental Health Services conducted the course at Baxter Park that involved 16 participants drawn from the soccer club’s administration, coaching and playing ranks.

“I spoke to MHFA and they confirmed that no other club in the world has this accreditation,” Jeffrey said.

“It entails two days of training but we split the training up into evening chunks to make it easier for the club to organise participants.”

The course draws parallels between general first aid and mental health first aid and prompts participants to establish an action plan.

“If someone is having a panic attack, has depression, suicidal thinking or a psychotic episode what would you do about it as a first aider?

“The course goes through aspects of mental health illnesses – what are the causes, what are the symptoms like and what are the treatment options?

“Just as general first aid has an action plan mental health first aid has an action plan.

“We take participants through that action plan and alert them to the main mental health diagnoses and teach them to look out for each other.”

Baxter president Bray Hodgkinson was thrilled with his club’s achievement and hoped that it would raise awareness of mental health issues among other clubs.

“An achievement like this for our small community club is incredible and I want to thank the participants and Bryan from MOAT who made this possible,” he said.

“We’re immensely proud to be the first sports’ club in the world to be accredited and hope to be an inspiration for other sports clubs to do the same.

“Mental health is such an important issue and we hope we can raise awareness within our local sports clubs to better support our players and members.”

Clubs wanting to learn more about the MHFA course should go to www.moat.com.au where Jeffrey’s contact details are available.

In State 3 news Frankston Pines clinched the signature of Callum Batey last week.

The 22-year-old has played at left back, central defence and in midfield. 

Batey’s football journey started when he was just five years old and joined the junior program at English Premier League club Newcastle United.

Two years later the family moved to Melbourne and he spent almost six years at Brighton before joining Bentleigh Greens as a 13-year-old.

He had a stint at Oakleigh Cannons then switched to Beaumaris making his senior debut as a teenager under head coach Marcus Stergiopoulos.

Batey was first alerted to Pines’ interest through close friend Marinos Panayi who joined the club last season.

The pair were teammates at Beaumaris.

“Marinos told me that they obviously are looking to get promoted and when I went down I really liked the group and the coach so it just seemed like a really good fit for me,” Batey said.

Pines have a couple more targets in their sights but the club isn’t prepared to name them yet.

In State 4 news Chelsea has confirmed details of some pre-season games.

Carlo Melino’s men will face Casey Panthers at Prospect Hill Reserve on Saturday 29 January (1pm and 3pm), Pakenham United at IYU Recreation Reserve on Saturday 5 February (1pm and 3pm), Peninsula Strikers at Centenary Park on Saturday 26 February (1pm and 3pm) and Aspendale Stingrays at Edithvale Recreation Reserve on Thursday 10 March (6.30pm and 8.30pm).

In other news Football Victoria released its preliminary league structures for 2022 last week and there’s been little change for local clubs.

Barton United, based in Cranbourne West, won the race for the spot in State 5 South that Rosebud Heart thought it had.

Barton runs senior men’s and women’s and junior programs and plays at Barton Recreation Reserve, a $7 million sporting precinct opened in 2019.

Scanning the club names throughout next year’s leagues makes it clear that FV has well and truly consigned the one-time policy of banning foreign names to the dustbin of history.

That policy was implemented and enforced by the old Sir Arthur George-led Australian Soccer Federation and would never have allowed Manningham Juventus or Monash City Villareal to compete under such names.

Meanwhile FV also released its player registration and team entry fees for next year.

Individual player fees for MiniRoos (age 11 and under) are $70, community juniors (under 12 to 18) $110, NPL juniors (under 14 to 18) $200, community senior men $233, community senior women $201 and over 35s (men and women) $135.

Player registration and team entry fees for senior NPL clubs are combined.

Langwarrin is up for $18,200 for its senior NPL2 teams next season.

There’s a sliding scale of team fees for State League clubs and the following entry fees are combined totals for seniors and reserves:

For State 1 (Mornington) the fee is $8430, State 2 (Peninsula Strikers and Skye United) $6920, State 3 (Frankston Pines) $5840, State 4 (Baxter, Seaford United, Chelsea and Somerville) $3780 and State 5 (Rosebud, Aspendale and Mount Martha) $3350.

FV has also set a 20 January deadline for clubs to supply fixturing information for next year.

Clubs must contact the federation by this date with information on preferred day of play, home fixture kick-off times and primary home venue.

For years now there’s been a fixture logjam on the peninsula with local clubs playing home games on the same day and at the same time.

Although playing home games on Saturday afternoons has long been the fixture preference of the majority of local clubs it’s hoped that FV’s fixturing may finally be tweaked to alleviate the congestion.

First published in the Mornington News – 21 December 2021