■ What a thrill it was to be MC at the Victoria University Whitten Oval last Saturday when, for the first time in more than 60 years, a premiership flag was unfurled. Like many of my era who missed out on the 1954 flag, it was great to be a part of this milestone. I hope we all can be part of an AFL flag at the same venue in future. On that subject, playing Hawthorn in Launceston at the weekend, we got a reality check, although many positives for the Doggies came out of the game.
Back to the VU Whitten Oval … and despite the VFL side losing to Box Hill, it was a great day for the club. The red, white and blue army were there in force and the way they have embraced the VFL side is sensational. Susan Alberti has taken on the role of president of the Footscray Bulldogs and Scott West is the number one VFL ticketholder.
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The Bulldogs trainers have a great line-up for their function coming up on May 22 at the Whitten Oval’s Elite Learning Centre. The great Kelvin Templeton will make his return to talk about his days in the red, white and blue. Other guests will include Mark and Lachie Hunter, Jake Stringer and Marcus Bontempelli, Luke Beveridge, Chris Maple and, fresh from the jungle, Merv Hughes. Bobby Murphy and I will be hosting the event, which raises funds for new equipment for the players. There will be a few very precious auction items. All Bulldogs supporters should be there as it’s a great night.
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Auskick is a great program, but this year the AFL has taken on the responsibility of getting the Auskick packs to participants and, quite frankly, it’s a disaster. Previously, the Auskick centres looked after the distribution, which worked perfectly. We are more than a month into the program and there is no delivery of the packs. For my son this is not so important as he has his footy from last year, but the first-year kids have nothing. Interestingly, the AFL has no problem processing the payment, but it has a problem delivering the goods after that. This is just not good enough.
■ Great to see nine WRFL representatives in the Vic Metro representative squad. Even though we lost the game against the EFL, we got the highest number of representatives in the squad: Wayde Skipper, Kwame McHarg, Jack Purton Smith, Rhett King, Tim Jenkins, Tim Quick, Murray Boyd, Andrew Panayi and Jayden Post.
Kevin Hillier
