Gay and David Walsh could easily be referred to as the "mum and dad" of one of northern Tasmania's thriving rural football clubs.
Mr Walsh helps keep the club he joined four decades ago financially afloat, while his wife Gay makes sure all the Lilydale Football Club players are fed after every training night and on game day.
"I'm really, really strict on the meat and veg and a lot of pasta," Mrs Walsh says.
"I just enjoy it so much. Every week I get this adrenaline rush and I think, 'Yay, football this week.'
"I really missed it last year with COVID. It's in my blood. All my family have been involved in football, so it's great."
The couple are just some of the volunteers helping keep rural Aussie rules football alive.
At a time when many regional football clubs across Australia are folding due to dwindling player numbers or financial trouble, the Lilydale Football Club in northern Tasmania is in its prime.
Its seniors are the Northern Tasmanian Football Association's reigning Division 1 premiers, and the club will this weekend celebrate 100 years.
The rural town is about 20 minutes drive from Launceston and boasts a district school, a pub, a bowls club, a few cafes, a family-owned supermarket and the footy club.
Inside the clubrooms, cabinets are filled with trophies from the past century, and premiership flags adorn the timber ceiling beams.
Outside, spectators still watch in their cars or sit on the sidelines.
The club currently has about 80 players, plus its tribe of volunteers.
Mr Walsh joined the club in 1981 when it was part of the Tamar League.
"I was actually going to play NTFA football but couldn't get a clearance through Scottsdale so I ended up here at Lilydale with friends, and met my partner, and have been here ever since," he explains.
One big family
Mr Walsh was club president for 13 years, is a former treasurer, and now runs the club's annual February auction, which he helped start 15 years ago.
"We built it, and built it, and built it, and most years now it raises anywhere from $18,000 to $20,000," he says.
The club is like a family for the Walshes, and that's why they've given their lives to it.
"This club is very lucky," Mr Walsh reflects.
"You'll see on Saturday how many brothers are playing and how many families continue to come back.
"There's the Hawes, the Bardenhagens, the Venns — they just keep coming back.
"They're all good boys and good footballers."
Rebuilding for the next century
Graham Venn started playing at Lilydale in 1956. His son Larry started in 1984, and grandchildren Louis and Jack are part of the current seniors' team.
After being in the Tamar League, the club joined the North Eastern Football Union in 1985, and in 2011 joined the NTFA, where it remains today.
Larry Venn has lived in Lilydale his whole life.
"We used to have a really good juniors club, and all my boys have come through the juniors," Mr Venn says.
"In 2017 when they won the seniors' premiership, there was like 14 or 15 of the seniors' players who had all played junior footy."
Mr Venn believes junior teams are crucial for football's long-term survival.
"Once this group of players finishes we haven't got any juniors coming through and I don't know how we'll survive," he says.
"They're all getting towards 25 and 26, so another five or six years, we're going to have to find players from somewhere else, so junior football is the key to the club."
Search on for young blood
Lilydale lost its junior side at the end of 2010 when it left the NEFU, and joined the NTFA the following year.
Thane Bardenhagen, who first joined the club as a four-year-old, coached the winning seniors' team in 2017 and again in 2019.
He agrees the club's next challenge is to get more young blood into the club.
"Everyone who plays out here either has a connection through the school or has a connection through family, so it's just a tight-knit group of friends who've played for years, basically," he says.
"We need to start a junior program so we can get the kids feeding through from the school."
The club's senior coach Colin Lockhart says work has started on bringing back juniors.
"We've got an Auskick program kicking off in two weeks' time. That's a 10-week program, and we're hoping we'll be able to build on that and eventually get back to having a junior representation side in a comp somewhere," Mr Lockhart says.
Keen to mark 200 years
But he believes Tasmanian football needs to work on reintroducing junior leagues.
"A lot of clubs are struggling with juniors, a lot of clubs are struggling with reserves.
"I'd like the Division One side to pull together and start somewhere. Have an under-14s or an under-16s.
"We could probably start with an under-16s side and after that they would go straight into reserve football.
The club's current facilities do not accommodate women's football, but Mr Lockhart hopes that could change in the future.
"Hopefully, in years to come, when we get more involvement in the juniors, we'll be able to put in and develop our clubrooms, our change rooms and our facilities to accommodate women's football."
