“Everyone loves soccer…ok…, maybe not everyone, but a lot of us do,” said Jimmy Christou the new president of the Mill Park Soccer Club to Neos Kosmos.
Christou took over Mill Park SC in November and began to enact change.
“We set up a new committee and we wanted to bring back that family feeling that we had as kids growing up when you grew up in soccer clubs, and kept you off the street.”
Community soccer was essential to us as immigrant families, to our settlement and development, as it now to new immigrants. Sport is the most profound way that community gels. The club was essential to our well-being and provided needed social and organisational skills for our parents, social skills for us as kids, and socialisation.
“That’s what we do build on the ‘family feel’, it was a lifestyle wasn’t it in many ways.”
Christou reflects on his youth, and the games where he “looked up at the senior players as our heroes.”
“I did that at Bentleigh Greens SC, as a seven-year-old, the senior players would let me walk into the changing rooms, and high five them – you know what? It made me fall in love with the game.”
He says that’s what he tried to bring back to Mill Park when he took over.
“We’ve got senior boys involved with the juniors training to come over and kick with them, we invite the juniors on game days, we bring them in the changing rooms, and they walk out with the senior players, we want to bring everyone together.”
Christou says the refocus on community and in development is a shift away from the current trend of spending “big bucks on external players that have no relationship to the club.” The new approach has drawn crowds of up to 300 people per game.
Christou believes that many once great community clubs lost purpose and focus and spent money on players rather than developing their own.
“I played with Mill Park SC seniors years ago, we had lost the spirit. I left because coaches came in and they started signing players, and paying big dollars.”
As soon as clubs begin to do well, their ambition overrides passion and purpose.
“These players were not there for the club, they came, trained, collected their paycheck, and left. The community spirit disappears.”
Christou wants to nurture young talent. He reflected on last Sunday’s game, when the U-16s played at home.
“As a committee we stayed back, the parents did as well, we invited the whole team after the game to come in and we put the yiros on for players, and parents.
“They had a ball, they put the music on and partied, it was fantastic.”
Christou is keen on diversity so the women play for free. “We had a big influx in the women’s game we went from two teams last year to four now.”
The senior women, “after four games, they’re on top of the ladder” he adds.
Christou wants “everyone in the club.”
“We want diversity, we serve Halal meats because we’ve got Muslim members in our club and we respect everyone.”
The community spirit and winning go hand in hand for the new president.
“When you’ve got the spirit, the wins come.” The team also plays a social role, it builds a positive view of diversity.
