President's September Update
When the final siren sounded at Elsternwick Park in the Premier Women’s Preliminary Final the 2022 season finished for the Caulfield Grammarians Football Club. While the ultimate goal of achieving more premierships wasn’t achieved there was a lot to savour about this season and much to be positive about moving forward.
The celebration of the centenary our football club was clearly a highlight and an incredibly special evening for all generations who attended. It was special that John Wilson, Greg Tootell, Matthew Scholten and Scott Williams were inducted as legends of the club in front of the largest attended event in our club's history.
The performance of our women’s teams, with both sides qualifying for Premier finals, and our senior side winning their way through to the Preliminary final was a fantastic achievement. However the progress and development of our women’s program is clear to see and all of our coaches and staff should be incredibly proud of this. With such a young side and with more talented young women coming through from a strong school football program, there is much to look forward to.
Our men’s teams frankly didn't have the seasons we had hoped and planned for. However while we are disappointed in these results we have still earned the right to compete in A Grade again next season and now have an opportunity to reset and go again. Before I elaborate on that, it is important to acknowledge the coaching and playing service of our retiring Senior Coach in Simon Williams and two of our great players in Declan Reilly and Keegan Stewart. Simon has guided our club to a real position of strength and we are a significantly better organisation thanks to all his hard work. Dec and Keegs have been true warriors for Grammarians for over a decade and we have been privileged to watch them in the blue and white for as long as we have. All three of these fine Fieldsman have brought us many big wins and many special moments and the final round wins against Old Scotch at Glenhuntly were a beautiful way for them to go out.
At the end of the season the club formed a subcommittee to find our new Senior Men’s Coach and have advertised through the VAFA, AFL Victoria and social media. The subcommittee includes myself, our Treasurer Keegan Stewart, past President Matt Scholten, Head of Strategy Ben Gross and former club legend Dean Anderson. Applications close on Wednesday 14th September and first round presentations of short listed candidates commences on Thursday 15th September. We are looking forward to working through this process in a timely manner so we can commence our reset and planning for an exciting 2023 season.
We still have two events this year for the CGFC community to come together. Next Thursday is the traditional CGFC AFL Grand Final Lunch at Encore in St. Kilda. This event has been running for over 20 years with fantastic entertainment and is a brilliant lead in to the Grand Final weekend with some final tickets still avaiable. Our final club event of the year will be the CGFC Presentation Night on Friday 7th October at the Golden Gate Hotel in South Melbourne and we look forward to who will be taking home the Tootell-Royals Medal in the men’s and Liz Wilson Medal in the women’s.
We would like to take this opportunity to express our appreciation to all our corporate and community partners for their significant support of our club in this season. We have come along way, but have so much more to do and look forward to your ongoing support next season.
Thank you so much for all your support in 2022.
Go Fields!
Will Bowes
CGFC President