The dilemmas facing club soccer in Australia were revealed on Saturday night as Bell Park Junior Soccer Club held its presentation night in its home at Batesford near Geelong.

The club which has a ballroom, function room, and a broad range of facilities was built by voluntary labour in the 1970s and recently played host to a match between a Geelong senior representative team and Carlton from the Ericsson Cup. A packed house of juniors from Under-7 Roo Ball players to the Under-15s, several of whom represented Geelong in the Victorian Under-15 Super League and their parents and friends supported the evening. Club Secretary Richard Rutkowski said that only three children were missing, and even some who had family wedding commitments to attend that day had turned up.

The names of the players covered virtually every nationality which has sent migrants to Australia and many who are Australian of more than one generation. They mixed together in harmony, joining in dances drawn from different countries and appealing to all age groups, from the toddlers to the age pensioners. Accents and opinions mingled and the pride of families in the achievements of their children was enormously uplifting. Billy Dorris, junior, coach and manager of Victorian and Geelong representative sides put forward an ambitious five-year plan for the club. This included the appointment of professional club officials at all levels, major reconstruction of the playing facilities and the establishment of a clear progression from the juniors through reserves and youth leagues to senior soccer. The expressed aim is to have the senior club in the Victorian Premier League. These are laudable and admirable goals, and club without such vision has little chance of long term progress

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The reality facing clubs like Bell Park however is masked by this optimism and the demonstration of the importance of the soccer club to its participants. They struggle to find volunteers to organise the various teams, even a team manager for the seniors. Bell Park failed to pay its dues to the Victorian Soccer Federation at the start of the season on time, and was docked three points in Division Three of the State League. It goes into next week's final round needing to beat one of the promoted teams to avoid relegation, and even then results elsewhere can determine its fate. The President of the Soccer Committee has organised an end of season trip to Bali for the players, but there was nervousness last night in the club as to whether there would be a large enough attendance to support the senior presentation night on 17 October. The Victorian Soccer Federation has made Divisions Three and Four of the State League amateur competitions to help save clubs from themselves by reducing expenditure on players. Yet clubs like Bell Park still force themselves to the brink of financial collapse by trying to offer potential recruits more than basic expenses for playing.

Some of the problems are historical. The clubs were built by migrants to Australia primarily from Europe in the 1950s and 1960s. They were often the means by which the post-war generations of migrants came to terms with an incomprehensible society. Soccer clubs helped migrants meet and mingle with others from a variety of cultures and backgrounds, and often provided the social networks which produced jobs, homes and families for the recent arrivals. Though there were some rocky moments, and some violence, the clubs triumphantly succeeded in that purpose, which was not their primary goal.

Now that generation is growing old and managing the transition to younger people is the key problem for all long-running soccer clubs. The very success of the clubs means that many of the younger generation do not need the facilities and the networks of the clubs as their parents did. They have integrated into Australian society, their children play football, cricket and myriad of other sports now available. For more recent arrivals from south and east Asia, the middle east or south America the existing clubs are sometimes too well established to be comfortable venues, or they are linked too closely to one ethnic group. So new clubs appear to need to be established just repeating what happened in the post-war period.

The Amateur League of Victoria has or has had Saigon United, Dandenong Bosna, Oak Park Doxa, Red Sea, Peru United, CafÈ Timor in its ranks in recent seasons.

So the existing clubs are not being renewed by the influx of younger adults, players or ex-players, who are totally involved and who have the time and energy to commit to the organisations, which require back-breaking effort and constant attendance if they are to survive.

The pace of modern society and the insecurity of jobs means that young people are just too busy to be heavily involved in what is often a thankless job keeping a soccer club afloat. Yet the investment, of capital and labour, in the existing clubs has provided a community asset which it would be ridiculous to throw away. There is still tremendous demand for soccer facilities. Schools throughout Australia are running soccer programs, parents want their children to take part in a less confronting code of football than Australian Rules or Rugby League, particularly at the younger age groups. The success of the national team and of Australians in the top soccer leagues overseas is beginning to filter through to the youngsters who see the possibility of progress through the world game.

As the national team and the Ericsson Cup struggle to obtain the resources to stay afloat and offer top players a professional career, they find it increasingly difficult to commit funds to junior development and the support of grass roots clubs like Bell Park. Much is being done through the Australian Sports Council, through the Institutes of Sport, through sponsorship from Diabetes Australia and the Victorian Health Promotion, Healthy Diet Try-It campaign to Snickers, Macdonalds and Puma, who have a more commercial interest in the game. Yet the base of the pyramid remains the soccer clubs and they are in crisis up and down the country. Perhaps they always have been, each generation faces its own version of these problems, but my sense is that as the millennium draws to a close the future of club soccer in Australia does hang in the balance. I see little sign of a constructive debate about the way forward. For one thing is certain, in the post-David Hill era, we cannot go back to what may have served tolerably well in the past at club, as well as at national, level.

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