Weekly Times | GOORAMBAT and District Football Club is looking to the future and not looking back.
The Bats celebrated their second win this season on Saturday in the Ovens and King league, and will hang up the boots for the year after Saturday’s game against Whorouly.
The club was one of three involved in a failed merger attempt in 2013 with the Swanpool and Tatong clubs.
The latter two have not played in the past two seasons, and Swanpool has taken the league to court.A hearing is set for December.
In the past few months the three clubs were asked about the possibility of revisiting the merger idea, but Goorambat president Mark Skilbeck said his club’s committee voted unanimously against it as the club had “moved ahead”.
He said Goorambat backed the merger in the beginning, but had since reformed to become the Goorambat and District club “under the guidance of the league and AFL North East Border” to cover a larger geographical area. “There’s nothing positive that was tabled that was of interest for us to even revisit the idea of merging,” Skilbeck said.
Pieter Kruger, the lawyer representing Swanpool, said the league notified it last month that Goorambat would not attend a mediation session.
He said the league was not following its own rationalisation plan. “If they really are interested in having this three-way merger why are they not saying to Goorambat you must come to the table?”
AFL NEB region general manager John O’Donohue would not comment while the case was before the courts.
Skilbeck said the promotion of young players in the area was important. He said his club and Benalla All Blacks, and the Ovens and King and Benalla junior leagues, were trying to form another under-18 side for the OKFL.
“In our region you’ve got a very strong Benalla Saints side in the (Goulburn Valley league) and there are a lot of players who, if they don’t make the cut, they don’t have a home to play football and they stop,” Skilbeck said.
