CB Smith Reserve in Fawkner was the setting for Adam Nakic’s thunderous volley on Friday night as Pascoe Vale held on for a decisive victory against Port Melbourne Sharks. It’s a vastly different setting from former senior home ground Hosken Reserve, complete with grandstand, media facilities and one slightly annoying light pole in middle. But the $6.3 million facility, shared with Moreland Zebras and Fawkner SC, provides a quality backdrop and a big step forward for local football.
Skip Fulton had a chat with Pascoe Vale’s Head of NPL and Council Liaison Officer Lou Tona, who has overseen a period of progress at Pascoe Vale both on and off the pitch – the seniors are sitting in 6th position under Vitale Ferrante and pushing for a finals tilt – about the club’s progress and future ambitions.
Skip Fulton (SF): How was the start to the season been?
Lou Tona (LT): It’s been quite a good start. The CB Smith project has been a good one, we’re excited about it. When you come to a ground with great quality facilities it’s quite exciting. Football wise, we started off no good and we’ve gotten better. It’s a work in progress, just like everything else at the club.
SF: The last time we spoke you said you had positive relations with the council. Is that still going well?
LT: The City of Moreland have been really good, especially with this facility here. I think they’ve got a really good plan, a plan from 7-8 years ago and it’s come to fruition now. Us, Fawkner and later the Zebras have come into their plans and it’s great to see three clubs benefiting from this great facility.
SF: The City of Moreland are one of the key stakeholders, FFV the other. How is your relationship with them?
LT: The dialogue between the FFV and the clubs has actually gone up a level, I think the way they embrace the clubs and engage with us as stakeholders is the difference between where the FFV was and where the FFV is now. Speaking to Kimon [Taliadoros], they want to engage the clubs even more which is great to see.
Every board’s got their own challenges, I think the game needs its own fresh outlook. They’re keen, there’s a lot of energy out there, and that’s what we need. They’ll have their trials and tribulations like we all do in everything we do.
SF: With the juniors, we’ve seen new teams come in and we’ve now got a 34 game league and a lot of double weekends. How have you found the youth setup this year?
LT: I’m a fan of kids playing a lot of games because I think when we were young kids, especially playing football, we were playing a lot of football in our backyards and we were sort of a bit isolated. But now kids have got a lot more to do and they might not be playing as much, so I think the length of the league is not a problem.
The double weekends are a bit difficult, not just the kids but also the clubs. I’m not a big fan of double weekends, but if that’s one of the problems we’ve got, and the program’s going forward and finds solutions, I’ve got no problems with that.
SF: CB Smith was the big project. Now that this is complete, what else is on the agenda for the committee to push forward with?
LT: The next thing we’ve got on the program is Richards Reserve, which is just 150 metres from Hosken. That’s dormant at the moment, we used to play there about 35 years ago, so what we’re getting done now is lighting – full training and match day lighting. We’ve got $30,000 going into it now and it’s going to become an active ground, and our next project is to increase the facilities there including change rooms. Once that is done, it’s about fixing the quality of surfaces on our grounds.
Also in our program we’ve quite heavily got synthetics. We spend about $20,000 a year, which isn’t our money, it’s our members’ money in hiring synthetics to make sure our kids are training on quality surfaces. That is our next project. It is starting to take shape but we have a 5 year plan.
So its about having four grounds fully active, fully floodlit, with good quality surfaces to provide the best possible opportunity for our kids to improve as players. The four grounds will be Richards, Hosken Reserve which has three pitches, and CB Smith. We’ll have a 12 month full annual allocation, plus CB Smith being our fifth ground just for senior matchday, and then it’s just about the quality of the football.
We want to get the culture of the club into our kids and we believe that the quality of the coaches that we’ve been employing, everything will take place.
