History of the Club
The following information was taken from a book written by
John Treneman and is a slice of our history from 1976 to the late 80's.
BBAFC started in April 1976 when
4 people attended a meeting at St Johns Church; between them they had 5
boys wanting to play!! By 1977 a composite team of 12 players were playing
in unofficial games organised with other clubs, by their coach Bill McNeill.
There were no fees and the parents purchased the balls.
In 1978 they were still playing friendly
matches while wearing the official club uniform of brown shirts, white
shorts and brown socks, obviously chosen to hide the dirt! By 1979 there
were 5 teams and the club fee was $4.00 per player. In 1981 the club changed
to the present coloured uniform and had 11 teams, the club fee was a whopping
$9.00 for midgets and $ 14.00 for Juniors. This was the year the All Whites
began their campaign for the World Cup eventually qualifying and in the
process making soccer more popular than ever.
In 1982 the club had so many people
wanting to be officers on the committee that they had to have nominations
and voting!!! (Tell that to the lone 3 committee members the club had in
1999!! ) There were 169 members, not enough coaches and the “8 O’clock”
newspaper wouldn’t print the results of games!. On the bright side there
were 35 Social members playing on Sundays and a fundraiser made $1,146.00
by selling 540 packets of jubes, 240 packets of licorice Allsorts and 1000
packets of pineapple lumps!!! . This money was for the new clubrooms. The
only problem was getting grounds to put them on. Many discussions with
council etc took place with Pigeon Mountain, Lloyd Elsmore(joining with
Cricket Club was suggested) and William Green Domain (now the Fencibles
grounds) all being considered. By 1984 Rogers Park was chosen and the plans
for clubrooms were completed and approved.
Unfortunately local residents objected
to the plan as they thought it was going to be a “booze barn”. 1984 was
also the year the club had it’s first player sent off. An application to
National Mutual for a mortgage was turned down but they would still be
a sponsor(!!??) After many delays and endless problems Stage 1 of
the clubrooms were started in January 1986. But wait, there’s more!!! Because
of problems with the council and leases, construction was stopped
and didn’t restart until 13th October. Stage 1 was still not finished at
the end of December!! The only good news was that the club had money invested
at Wespac for 21%!!
In 1987 the local residents were
still trying to stop the clubrooms from being built. The March minutes
reported that the builder was given strict instructions not to talk to
them to “ eliminate rumor and false information”.
1988 season began with 48 Midgets(only
2 girls!), 71 juniors, 1 senior team and 1 over 30’s team. A decision was
made to allow the over 30’s back to Rogers Park after they were banned
the previous year for “bad behaviour”!! Stage 2 of the clubrooms
was started at last and were finished the same year.
As can be seen a lot of hard work
was put in over these years to get the club established, lets make sure
we continue the good work into the 21st century!!
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