Football Victoria Community Awards 2019 nominations now open

Staff Writer

Football Victoria is made possible because of the thousands of volunteers, administrators, coaches, referees and clubs that each have inspirational individuals who dedicate their time to the sport.

A statement from the Football Victoria can be found here:

The Football Victoria Community Awards 2019 provide us with an opportunity to shine a light on these community heroes for all the work they do. It is their contribution that bring football fans and players even closer to the game. We are excited to share these celebrations with you all again. The awards recognise those in our football community who embrace diversity and champion inclusive practices at all levels,” said Football Victoria CEO Peter Filopoulos.

WHY NOMINATE

  • Increase public awareness of your volunteers, club and programs
  • Be recognised as an outstanding leader in community football
  • Share your success story with the rest of the Victorian Football community
  • Winners and their guest will be invited to the Community in Business celebration on Friday 25 October at Hyatt Place, Essendon Fields

There are seven categories for the awards including:

Metropolitan Club of the Year

This award recognises a community metropolitan football club that exemplifies the vision as a sport for all Victorians. They actively create welcoming and inclusive environments through good governance, dedicated volunteers and are committed to engaging with people from all walks of life.

Nominations for this category are sought from football clubs across metropolitan Melbourne.

Nominate here

 

Regional Club of the Year

This award recognises a regional football club that exemplifies the vision as a sport for all Victorians. They actively create welcoming and inclusive environments through good governance, dedicated volunteers and are committed to engaging with people from all walks of life.

Nominations for this category are sought from football clubs across rural and regional Victoria.

Nominate here

 

ALDI MiniRoos Kick-Off Site of the Year

This award acknowledges outstanding delivery of the ALDI MiniRoos Kick-Off program, that gives juniors the best possible entry into football providing a fun, safe and inclusive experience for all participants.

We encourage nominations from all our ALDI MiniRoos Kick-Off sites.

Nominate here

 

Partner Organisation of the Year

This award recognises a stakeholder that has provided significant support to ensure all Victorians, no matter their gender or background, have the chance to get involved in football.

Futsal sport centres, local government, schools, community organisations and delivery partners are encouraged to nominate.

Nominate here

 

Volunteer of the Year

This award celebrates a member of the football community who has made an exceptional contribution to improving the game and supporting others to become actively involved in football.

We welcome nominations from all forms of football including clubs, futsal, NPL and Walking football.

Nominate here

 

Community Female Coach of the Year

This award goes to a female coach who has gone out of their way to make sure that participants are supported to develop both their skills and a lifelong love of football.

We encourage nominations from all formats of the game, junior and senior, male and female competitions, ALDI MiniRoos, Futsal and representative teams.

Nominate here

 

Community Male Coach of the Year

This award goes to a male coach who has gone out of their way to make sure that participants are supported to develop both their skills and a lifelong love of football.

We encourage nominations from all formats of the game, junior and senior, male and female competitions, ALDI MiniRoos, Futsal and representative teams.

Nominate here

 

 

We encourage everyone involved in football to consider nominating someone who has made an outstanding contribution to the game and inspired, motivated or supported others over the past year.

It’s a fantastic way to say thank you.

Eligibility

Entries are invited from individuals, clubs, competitions, stakeholders and partner organisations who contribute to the delivery of football in Victoria. We want to recognise and reward all the amazing work taking place across the state including the desire to embrace diversity and make football a sport for all Australians.

Click here to see nomination eligibility, assessment criteria and other important details

Key Dates
Nominations Open Friday 30 August 2019
Nominations Close Tuesday 24 September 2019
Nominations shortlisted Friday 27 September 2019
Independent Judges assess and Winners Thursday 4 October 2019
Winners notified Tuesday 8 October 2019
Awards Presentation / CIB Hyatt Place, Essendon Fields Friday 25 October 2019
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Football Victoria and VicHealth partner on anti-racism program as community sport data reveals systemic problem

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Image Credit: Shutterstock

Football Victoria has partnered with the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation to roll out the Set The Standard initiative across the state’s football clubs, in a collaboration that signals a significant shift in how Australia’s most popular club-based sport is approaching racism and cultural exclusion at the grassroots level.

The partnership brings together the state’s peak football governing body and its primary health promotion agency around a shared finding that can no longer be treated as incidental. According to the 2025 report Enhancing the Capacity of Victorian Community Sport to Tackle Racism, 56 per cent of surveyed participants had experienced or witnessed racism in community sport. In a state where football draws participants from some of the most culturally diverse communities in the country, that figure represents a systemic failure the sport can no longer address through conduct policies alone.

Clubs that subscribe to the Set The Standard newsletter will be entered into a draw to win one of three $1,000 vouchers, available for equipment, facility improvements, events or other community initiatives. The incentive is designed to drive early engagement with a program whose ambitions extend well beyond a newsletter subscription.

What the Partnership Signals

Racism in sport has historically been treated as a conduct and governance issue, managed through complaints mechanisms that require incidents to be formally reported and tend to significantly undercount the actual prevalence of harm. VicHealth’s framing of racism as a public health problem repositions the entire conversation.

Experiences of racism are associated with measurable negative health outcomes including anxiety, depression and social withdrawal. When community sport, which governments and health agencies actively promote as a vehicle for physical and mental wellbeing, becomes a source of those same harms, the public health cost is direct and quantifiable.

Resources, not Rhetoric

For Football Victoria, the partnership brings something the governing body cannot provide on its own. VicHealth’s credibility, resources and public health framework give the initiative a foundation that a sporting organisation working alone would struggle to establish. Set The Standard offers clubs practical tools and guidance built around progress rather than perfection, which reflects a realistic understanding of how cultural change works inside volunteer-run community organisations.

The $1,000 vouchers are not a side note. Most community clubs operate on tight margins, depend on volunteer administrators and are already stretched managing growing participation demands. Finding room to invest in cultural development programs on top of everything else is difficult. Providing tangible resources directly addresses that constraint at the point where clubs are most likely to disengage.

The program also arrives at a consequential moment. Football in Victoria is absorbing significant participation growth following the AFC Women’s Asian Cup and sustained increases in junior registrations, bringing new communities into the game in large numbers. The 2025 data suggests the environments those communities are entering are not consistently safe or welcoming. Participation growth and cultural safety work need to move together. A sport that grows larger without becoming more inclusive has not actually improved the experience of the people playing it.

The Man Who Built a Women’s Football Program from Nothing is now an Award-Winning Gender Equity Leader

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Image Credit: Football Victoria

Eight years ago, Spring Hills Football Club did not have a girls’ team. Today it has one of the most recognised women’s programs in Melbourne’s west, a senior NPLW side, and a head coach who has just been named Gender Equity Leader of the Year at the Melton City Council Volunteer Achievement Awards.

Tom Markovski, Spring Hills’ NPLW Head Coach, received the award at a ceremony coinciding with National Volunteer Week, recognised for his community leadership, promotion of gender equality and commitment to advancing the status of women and people of all genders in sport. The recognition comes from outside the football community entirely, awarded by a local council celebrating volunteers across every sector of civic life in one of Melbourne’s fastest-growing regions.

Building from scratch

When Markovski arrived at Spring Hills, women’s football at the club did not exist. His first act was to champion the establishment of the club’s first all-girls team, a process that required persuading a club culture built around men’s football that the investment was worth making.

Women’s football in community clubs has historically struggled to access the same facilities, scheduling priority, coaching resources and institutional support as the men’s game. Clubs have been slow to invest in programs whose return is less immediately visible than a senior men’s premiership, and in a growing outer-suburban community like Melton, where volunteer capacity is finite and demand across every program is high, the case for building something new always has to compete with the urgency of maintaining what already exists.

Markovski made the case anyway, and kept making it across eight years of coaching senior and junior NPL teams while simultaneously building the structural foundations of a women’s program designed to outlast any individual’s involvement. The club’s first all-girls team became multiple junior girls teams. Those junior teams created the pipeline for a senior women’s side. The senior women’s side created visible pathways for younger players to see where the game could take them within their own club.

The outcome is a program that Spring Hills now holds up as central to its identity rather than supplementary to it. The club has become a leader in female participation in Melbourne’s west, and recently made history within the NPLW Victoria structure by fielding junior teams coached entirely by female coaches, a milestone that reflects the depth of the program Markovski helped build.

What the Award Recognises

The Melton City Council’s decision to name Markovski its Gender Equity Leader of the Year places his work in a frame that extends beyond football. Melton is one of the fastest-growing local government areas in Australia, a diverse and rapidly expanding community where the institutions that bring people together, like schools, councils, sporting clubs, carry an outsized responsibility for social cohesion.

Mayor Cr. Lara Carli, speaking at the awards ceremony, reflected on the role volunteers play in communities like Melton’s. “Volunteering creates friendships, strengthens communities and builds a sense of belonging,” she said. “It helps people feel connected, supported and valued, and those things are more important than ever in a growing and diverse community like ours.”

For the girls now playing football at Spring Hills who were not playing anywhere eight years ago, Markovski’s contribution is not abstract. It is the specific and concrete fact of having somewhere to play, someone to coach them, and a pathway that leads somewhere.

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