My association with the Club started in 1990 when my 10-year-old son Mark was encouraged to play lacrosse by our neighbour’s son. We went out to Springvale, where Larry Whiting or Jorge Menidis had set up U13 and U15 teams after clinics in the local schools. When the season started, Jorge handed me a scoresheet and that was it! Our daughter Erin, started playing the following year and my weekends were fully booked for many years to come.
Springvale created some good players, but it was too far away from Chadstone to have and real “connection” with the main club. I also think coaches found it difficult to fit in coaching and their own training. Unfortunately there were many parents who just saw Saturday as a day off for them and left me to transport/babysit some quite unruly boys.
With the move to Chadstone, I remained as Team Manager for many years and then got “volunteered” to do other jobs around the place, from Canteen to line-marking the only jobs I haven’t done are umpiring and coaching! Like many Chaddy parents before me, the game of lacrosse hooked me and I happily entered into the Chadstone Lacrosse family and worked in whatever capacity was needed to run the Club and keep the kids playing.
While I was concentrating on the junior teams, the 1990’s were ushered in with some very mixed conditions in the rest of the Club. We were still fielding teams, and players were selected for State and even Australian teams. Some teams were winning Premierships, but it seems there was little enthusiasm on the administrative side in the early 90’s. Consequently money was tight and the spirit around the Club seemed to be flagging. Juniors were still coming into the sport, thanks to the fabulous efforts of people like Jorge Menidis, but the numbers of Senior players was starting to fall away- with disastrous results. Without the numbers, we lost our State League team and more players opted to play with other teams. Without senior players to support the Club, the junior teams started to suffer too, resulting in many combined teams.
By 2003 the Club had hit rock bottom. We had only five senior men players, outstanding bills to the Council and very few teams.
When I took over the Presidency, the Club was being run by a few enthusiastic but inexperienced parents of Juniors, because there were no seniors willing or able to take on Committee positions. The Committee had to consider the future of the Club, and it wasn’t good. We had three options – closing down completely; just being a junior club; or to take assistance from other clubs and try to rebuild.
We all wanted the Club to continue because we valued what Lacrosse did for our kids. We also had a very successful Women’s Team who had played together for years, and were winning Premierships year after year.
We decided to go back to the basics that had started the Club in the first place: attracting and keeping the Juniors, and their parents, while still supporting our remaining men and our successful senior women.
With the assistance of the lacrosse community 2004 proved to be the start of better things. Three Clubs offered assistance to get our Senior men back on the field. All three, Camberwell, MCC and Malvern, offered to allow our remaining men to play with their teams at an appropriate level, while still being CLC members, but only Malvern offered to play at Treyvaud Park on occasion, and to play in Chadstone colours when they did.
We accepted the Malvern offer because we wanted our juniors (who were unaware of the senior politics going on), to still believe there was a future at Chadstone.
Unfortunately, our remaining senior men players didn’t agree with our call, and during the season, and nearly all decided to leave, with some animosity and bad feelings, and even legal treats! Luckily Malvern stuck to the agreement, and “Chaddy Men” were still seen on the field from time to time, and senior men trained in the Park once a week. Even though we were creating an illusion, It seemed to work and our juniors stayed around to build the basis of our new senior era.

We worked hard. Along with John Barlow, Mary Conheady, Maureen Austin, Janine Halls and a few stalwarts, we worked tirelessly with the Juniors to keep them (and their parents) happy, and to keep the Club afloat. By 2004 we could see that the Club had turned a corner, and things were on the up once again. The juniors we had nurtured stayed with us and became a fabulous foundation for the teams we have today. But the pressure had taken its toll on me and I had to retire from the Club for a few years due to ill health.
In 2005 I was very proud to be made a Life Member.
2008 was our milestone year. We were Lacrosse Victoria’s joint winners of the “Club of the Year”. We had a 50% increase in players numbers. Brett Marchant was named “Coach of the Year” and Mary Conheady was Stonnington Council’s “Citizen of the Year” for her voluntary work at Chadstone LC. For the first time we established a working relationship with Monash University bringing a flow of new senior players too.