To infinity and beyond…

Great news at RJFC – as is blatantly obvious – we’re a growing club, and just like last year, we’ve never before encountered the growth we’re now experiencing.

We’ve gone from 3 teams in 2007 to likely fielding 20 teams this year.

SEASON	NO. OF TEAMS	NO. OF PLAYERS REGISTERED
2007	3	Ask Les!
2008	5	Ask Les!
2009	5	38+ (our current Colts 1st year)
2010	6	56+
2011	6	69+
2012	6	93
2013	7	131
2014	7	163
2015	9	168
2016	15	330
2017	20 likely	350 already (380+ likely)
Total growth	566%	91o%

That’s growth of over 500% over 10 years! If we were a business, you’d be buying shares.

We’re most probably the fastest growing club in the YJFL (which is confirmed as the biggest junior league of any code in Australia) and everyone should be really proud.

KB the great

Part of that growth necessitates using more than one ground. See Our Grounds.

All clubs our size and larger utilise two or more grounds and teams are distributed for both training and games to multiple venues. We’re no different.

Last year the City of Yarra organised for us to utilise Kevin Bartlett Reserve as another venue, and we are very apperceive of this great facility. Big change rooms, big canteen, and a big ground with fantastic open space – it’s a piece of country in the heart of the city – “Rural Richmond!”.

We want the whole club to embrace this ground as our fortress – we always relish playing and winning our home games here.

We will be running a canteen there this year and selling our apparel too. Yes it’s a whole 3km from Citizens Park, but thank your lucky stars we don’t live in Templestowe or Park Orchards, where grounds can be 10km from each other.

We have a number of interplaying restrictions on training and game allocation, and try and balance these as best we can. We won’t always get it perfect, and keep everyone happy, but we’ll try and go close. The fact is with 20 teams we can’t fit training for all of them onto Citizens Park any more, as much as we’d like to.

Some teams have elected to train at Kevin Bartlett, and we appreciate their progressiveness. The only other option would be to cap registrations to restrict the club to 10 teams – not something we want to consider.

Onwards and upwards

To accommodate our growth, we’ve been working really closely with the City of Yarra, both last year and this year, and they have come to the party with large grants and assistance. Recently, we’ve added defibrillators and new equipment to Kevin Bartlett, had Citizens Park re-levelled and re-turfed, the much needed drainage and irrigation works at Citizens Park are currently underway, we now have an extra storage facility, and we are working with the council on essential change room improvements.

We ask that you be patient with us as we work through growing pains, and address issues as best we can, as they arise. We’re all volunteers, and there are a lot of new tasks needed around the club – if you’d be interested in helping, we’d love to hear from you.

The testament to the club is that even with all this growth, there is still a great spirit about the place – a little country club feel – and it’s our intent to keep it that way, no matter how big we get.

After all, a footy club is the heart of a community, and you are all part of it.

Go Tigers