Southern Suburbs Rugby League Football Club

Club History

One Sunday afternoon way back in 1945 there was a meeting held on the verandah of Fred Hansen's house in Romeo Street and a club was formed and officially called Southern Suburbs Sporting Club. This was changed to Southern Suburbs Football Club a decade later in 1955. The very first president was Fred Hansen, Les. (Slip) Winton was treasurer, assistant treasurer was John Downie and Sylvia Cocking was secretary. The junior football players commenced playing for the club in 1945 and seniors kicked off in 1946. The very first coach of the senior football side was Laurie Coleman after he was released from the RAAF at the end of the war.

In the early days of the club Harley Denning and George Bennett worked tirelessly selling tickets to raise money. At this point in time we met every weekend down at the old Railway Hotel and Post Office Hotel. Tom Noble owned these pubs and was very good to the club by way of looking after players by giving them free board and lodging until they found jobs.

When Mackay Junior Rugby League formed in 1966, Southern Suburbs was one of the original clubs.

In 1971 it was decided that the club should have a place to call home and went on the look out for some land to buy. After lots of searching it was agreed to approach Harry Schaeffer who had land in Milton Street. With some financial assistance from Norm Deakin from Bakers Creek Car Wreckers the club was able to raise enough finance to purchase a block for 5,000 pounds. At this point a deal was made with Harry to purchase more land when and if the money became available. The club actually brought two more blocks of land from him.

A lot of negative comments were made about building a club in a residential area and Sir Albert Abbott who was Mayor at the time was extremely helpful in getting the approval to build. Sid Spreadborough who was the Sergeant of police and in charge of licensing was a great help in acquiring the license. With the land as collateral the club obtained a loan from the bank and W.H. Paxtons who were the XXXX distributors went guarantor for the loan to build the clubhouse.

It was a very proud day when the clubhouse was officially opened in May 1973, but we had actually started trading the Thursday before Easter. The committee worked on a volunteer basis. This got a bit out of hand and the club engaged the services of Ken Shailer as the first manager. Being the first licensed club in the district it gained in popularity quickly. There was a small kitchen on the side of the building and one of the very first caterers were Mrs Paul and Mrs Blackford (both these ladies have grandsons who play for the club today) and to their credit they were turning out up to 260 meals a day on most weekends.

Within the 1st year of trading the club had amassed in the vicinity of 1000 members and the club couldn't handle the volume. Already the building was too small to hold numbers at peak times and the cold room couldn't cope so the club had to build an additional cold room at the back of the club in its own shed.

The club kept plodding along and as soon as more money was available in 1984 the clubhouse was extended. Three additional 3 bays (original size was 5 bays) were built onto the back, and this configuration lasted until the 1st major extension in 1995.

In the original application for the licensed club back in 1973 the club had power points installed everywhere in anticipation for the poker machines. Finally in 1992 poker machines came to Mackay. The clubs original allocation was for 29 machines but over the years the number of machines has grown. The profit generated from these has made the club the financially secure. The club's financial position has allowed it to sponsor various sporting bodies in the Mackay area. This year each of the schools in the area has received a grant for sport.

Since it's inception the Club has had 35 Life Members, Fred Hansen was the first to be awarded this membership. The club's first Patron was Tom Noble, but because of business reasons he relinquished this position after a short time and Des Menzies accepted the honour and is still the Club's patron today. Back as far as 1951 there was a young lady who played vigoro for Southern Suburbs Sporting Club, this young lady is still very much involved with the Club today - her name Eunice Armstrong nee Mooney. Johnny Bickmore has been a faithful and long time member of the Club and we all have fond memories of his tune "Daisy".

Sources:

http://www.sportingpulse.com/club_info.cgi?c=7-2264-23780-0-0&sID=25078

 retrieved 18 April 2009