Sydney-based fledging NPL side Dunbar Rovers have eradicated all fees for youngsters who sign for their junior teams leading a revolution that, if other clubs were to follow, would open elite pathways slammed shut for years to those unable to afford costs sometimes well in excess of $3000 per season.
Clubs across Australia’s lower tiers siphon millions of dollars from junior programs to pay first team players up to $800 for per match.
But pioneering Dunbar don’t pay their players a cent. Nor do they charge parents of their junior teams a cent either.
Instead, the football visionaries who run the eastern suburbs-based club dream of seeing a future Socceroo rise through their ranks thanks to a policy of inclusion rather than exclusion.
In the wake of SBS analyst and former Socceroo Craig Foster highlighting Dunbar’s drive to challenge the prevailing pay-for-play wisdom in a recent Fairfax column, Dunbar's Facebook page has been inundated and kids are queing to sign up. It's beginning to look more Roy of the Rovers than Dunbar Rovers.
Peter Hennessy, one of five directors of the NPL Division Three side, has a utopian vision that one day it will be the model all follow and the age of Australia being most expensive country in the world for kids to play at the elite levels will be over.
“It would be nice to think we could change things from the bottom up," he says. “The system at the moment is broken. There is no doubt the cost of elite youth football is astronomically expensive and is getting worse.
“It might be fine if the registration fees (now capped at $2400 in NSW) actually went towards the infrstructure for the kids, but it's actually siphoned off to paying wages for first grade players. And that makes the situation even worse.
“There's absolutely no doubt talented kids are being lost to the game because of the costs involved.
"Imagine if we can get a player who would otherwise have gone to another code who goes on to play for the Socceroos .... that would be a real feather in our cap."
Instead of paying their players, Dunbar offer career guidance and provide networks to tap into through their contacts amid acknowledging that plenty of players will take their services elsewhere in search of a payday.
Hennessy welcomes what he describes as an "aura" which is developing around the club. it's reaching the point where sponsors are lining up to be associated with them.
“I think we’re also attracting players who ordinarily would play at a higher standard but because they want to be associated with our club and our ideals are prepared to play at a slightly lower level," he said.
“My utopia is that we create a unique football community. It would be great to see what we’re doing happening all over the country.
“But you need the people on board with the passion and skills to do it right. We will need to $200,000 next year and we already have half that figure locked in.”
And that’s without parents paying a penny.
