When New Lambton Football Club upgraded their playing strips, they didn’t account for more than 1000 old shirts that no longer had any use.
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For Football Equipment Aid Tasmania vice-president Donna Leach, the timing of the change couldn’t have been better.
“I have been supporting a football club [Tuguegarao City, in the Philippines] for eight years now after moving to Tasmania, offering assistance for the kids back home and doing fundraising for them,” Leach said.
“Lorraine and Steve Bateman here in Newcastle heard about this campaign and then New Lambton Football Club approached them to donate the shirts and boots.”
Leach has been pushing for support due to the struggle that many Philippine children have getting the necessary equipment to start their footballing careers.
“What we realised was that a lot of kids [in the Philippines] miss out on playing football for their clubs over there because they can’t afford kits and boots,” she said. “They wait for their friends to finish playing and then they borrow their friends shoes.”
“It melted my heart, and I thought that there was something I could do in Australia that we could do to help. They are so keen to play and learn about soccer so we could help them do that.”
The problem for children seeking to play football in the Philippines is that the sport is still growing in popularity, leaving many shops poorly stocked for the season.
Members of the club in Tuguegarao City are forced to drive sixteen hours to the capital, Manila, for boots and shinpads.
“The initial idea was that everyone in Newcastle who had played football had boots that were sitting in their cupboards gathering dust,” said Leach’s Newcastle-based friend Lorraine Bateman. “We thought that we’d put a notice up on the local canteen to donate and it’s absolutely mushroomed from there.”
Even before the New Lambton club donated their now-outdated kits, Bateman’s notice had collected over a 100 pairs of boots, fifty shinpads and as many shorts, socks and training shirts.
As well as the 1000 shirts from New Lambton, the club also contributed 70 pairs of boots. The exchange has also led to New Lambton partnering with Tuguegarao City in the hopes that they can send coaches, umpires and a team to the Philippines’ National Soccer Tournament in January, 2018.
New Lambton will also look to found a Philippine-Australia Friendship Club over the next three to five years. The Friendship Club would see a Philippine-based team invited to Australia each year to compete in a series of tournaments.