General Manager of Oakleigh Cannons FC Aki Ionnas: “We’ve proved we are the best team in NPL Victoria”

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Aki Ionnas is the General Manager & Director of Football at the Oakleigh Cannons FC, whose senior men’s side were champions of the National Premier Leagues (NPL) Victoria in 2024.

Speaking with Soccerscene in a wide-ranging chat, Ionnas details why his club continues to have great success on and off the park – cementing themselves as one of the top clubs in the state.

First of all, going back a couple of months now, you were crowned champions of NPL Victoria in 2024 – tell me a little bit about how rewarding it was to win the GF in Victoria this past season?

It was an amazing season and we deserved the results from the hard work we put in. If we even look back a bit further, what we’ve shown in the last 3 years is that we’ve proved we are the best team in NPL Victoria.

We’ve won 2 Championships in that time, a Dockerty Cup, a Community Shield and a Premiers Plate – what else can I say, these are great achievements.

What were the factors that you think contributed to your success last season, but also the last few years?

First of all, Chris Taylor and his coaching team, who are absolutely fantastic and have been for a number of years. Chris is a top class coach and since he’s been with us, he has won us plenty of silverware. Our Football Operations person, John Ioannou, has also made a huge contribution to our success on the field – working very closely with Chris.

The entire board, the great support we have from sponsors, it’s all a big family and the results continue to speak for themselves.

Everyone works hard together for the same cause and that’s a main reason why we have been so successful.

How will you sustain that success moving forward into next season, what are your objectives for next season?

It’s always hard to sustain the success, it’s not easy at all. We are a close-knit club and we are now always going to be the hunted. Being the hunted is always difficult, but we will always continue to try and achieve our goals and be up there at the end of the season.

There’s a recent history of success that we’ve established, record Grand Final wins and also good results in the Australia Cup (reaching the quarter and semi-finals recently), so we’ve found the formula and I don’t see why we can’t continue that.

Image credit: One Nil Media

Are you able to provide an update on the facility upgrades at Jack Edwards Reserve, how is that progressing at the moment and when is it due for completion?

It’s all going great. Our 550 Lux light towers are now up and they will be operational in a couple of weeks. All of our home games next season will be on a Friday Night, so everything is going to plan, which is amazing to see.

Could you just detail what the other planned facility upgrades are for?

Alongside the 550 lux light towers, there will be upgrades with a new 500 seat grandstand, a corporate function room upstairs in the pavilion, medical rooms, referee rooms and also first aid rooms. The plan is for everything to be completed by late 2025.

Council has contributed significantly to these upgrades – tell me a little bit more about how this will positively impact your club and the local community overall?

We definitely appreciate council’s support but also a big thanks goes to our Chairman Kon Kavalakis and our President Stan Papayianneris – these two have been instrumental in getting this project up and running.

The facilities are great and it’s a hub for the local community in the area; it’s going to be fantastic and really take the club to the next level. We’ve seen success on the park and now we’re starting to see the success off the park. We’re going to be one of Melbourne’s leading clubs in the state of Victoria.

Image credit: One Nil Media

Moving on Aki, what are your thoughts on the finer details announced around the National Second Division (NSD) recently – what is Oakleigh’s stance on potentially joining the second tier?

Of course, we’d love to be a part of the national second division. We have some of the best facilities in the state, we are looking very positively at the idea (of joining a national second tier).

Image credit: One Nil Media

What were the reasons around why the club wasn’t amongst the foundation clubs of the competition?

We initially just wanted to wait and see more of the details come out at the time of submission. Now that more details have come out into the open, it’s looking very positive overall.

With NPL Premiers across the country invited to join next year’s NSD, are you aware of the financial expectations if you were to win the premiership in NPL Victoria next season and get invited to the national competition (have they been communicated from FA to the clubs?)

No not as yet, but we expect those details to come out when appropriate.

What do you personally think of the NSD’s “Champions League” model, as opposed to the Home and Away model?

I personally think it’s a great start (with the announcement of the Champions League model) and if it was to be a home and away season eventually, we would look at those details when they come out and make a further decision.

Just back on the club, obviously women’s football participation continues to boom in the state – is an NPL Women’s side for your club on the immediate agenda for you to implement?

It’s definitely on the agenda and it’s a high priority for us. We have people in the background working on this and with the participation rates great around the women’s game it.

Image credit: One Nil Media

What does the future for the club look like Aki? Obviously, there are very positive signs – where do you see the club positioned over the next few years and what are its main objectives?

We want this club to continue its strong success in all areas. We are always striving for this club to be competing for silverware, whether that’s in Victoria or on a national level.

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Northern NSW Football’s Leadership Program Reaches 98 Graduates as Sport Moves Toward 2027 Gender Parity Targets

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Northern NSW Football has concluded its 2026 Women’s Leadership Program, with 13 participants taking the total number of graduates to 98 women across the region since the program launched in 2023. The five-week program combined online modules with a two-day conference at Rydges Resort in the Hunter Valley, bringing together club volunteers, committee members, administrators and NNSWF staff from Newcastle, Macquarie, Northern Inland and Football Mid North Coast zones.

The program’s growth has been uneven year to year. It launched with two intakes in 2023, drew 25 scholarship recipients in 2024,then settled to 12 in 2025, which brought the cumulative total to 85 before this year’s cohort of 13.

The program was facilitated by Ann Odong, who founded The Women’s Game, Australia’s first dedicated women’s football website, in 2008,and later spent six years as Football Australia’s Media and PR Manager steering the Matildas’ program through multiple World Cups and Olympic Games,before moving into independent consulting work.

A pipeline built against a 2027 deadline

The program fits within a wider set of national targets football and the broader sport sector have committed to reaching within the next twelve months. Football Australia’s Our Game initiative, launched in 2021, set a goal of 50:50 gender parity across players, coaches, administrators and referees by 2027.Separately, the federally backed National Gender Equity in Sport Governance Policy requires all funded national and state sporting bodies to reach 50 per cent women or gender-diverse board directors by 1 July 2027, with funding to be withheld from organisations that fall short.As of the most recent Australian Sports Commission data, 22 per cent of chief executives and 25 per cent of board chairs across 65 federally funded national sporting organisations were women.

Programs built around confidence, networking and committee-level skills, the model NNSWF has run since 2023, are the mechanism most sporting bodies are relying on to close that gap, since board and executive vacancies typically draw from an organisation’s existing pool of committee members, volunteers and administrators rather than external recruitment.

This year’s cohort

University of Newcastle FC’s Charlotte Carey, one of this year’s participants, said the program had given her the confidence to pursue a career in football while developing skills applicable across other areas of her life. Fellow participants included representatives from Cooks Hill United, Westlakes Wildcats, Newcastle Olympic, Lake Macquarie City FC, Western Wolves, Gunnedah and District Soccer Association, Wauchope FC and Stockton Sharks, alongside three NNSWF staff members.

NNSWF Participation and Women’s Football Officer Jamie Bressan said the program had continued to provide women across the game with an opportunity to connect and build leadership skills, with topics covering effective communication, personality styles and team dynamics. Bressan pointed to the network the program builds among participants, drawn from clubs and committees across the region, as one of its central functions rather than the training content alone.

The 2026 cohort’s spread across four zones, Newcastle, Macquarie, Northern Inland and Football Mid North Coast, continues a pattern of the program drawing participants from outside the Hunter region’s largest population centres, consistent with its original design to make the conference and online components accessible to women in regional and remote parts of northern NSW through funded travel and accommodation.

Football SA Extends Sammy D Foundation Partnership Into Third Year for Violence Prevention Round

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Football South Australia will run its fifth consecutive Violence Prevention Round in partnership with the Sammy D Foundation from 3 to 5 July, with junior teams again asked to wear blue armbands throughout the weekend.

The arrangement was formalised in March 2022, when Football SA and the Foundation signed a three-year agreement, funded by SA Power Networks, to deliver the Foundation’s Monkey See, Monkey Do program to more than 7,500 junior members across 52 clubs.The program is a 90-minute session delivered by Sammy D Foundation facilitators focused on changing players’ attitudes toward bullying and violence and educating parents and club members about the impacts of inappropriate sideline behaviours, built around the story of Sam Davis, the 17-year-old South Adelaide junior footballer whose death in a one-punch assault in 2008 led his parents to establish the Foundation.Football SA general manager George Georganas and Foundation chief executive Brigid Koenig confirmed the partnership at its 2022 launch, framing it as a mechanism for improving club culture from junior sidelines upward.

The round has run every season since, expanding in 2023 to incorporate the Federation Cup Final at ServiceFM Stadium,a weekend Football SA dedicated as the Sammy D Violence Prevention Round alongside the Federation Cup Final Day continuing through the 2024 season,when it was again scheduled as a designated round ahead of that year’s Federation Cup Final and shifting from an early blue tape design to the blue armbands used in 2025 and again this year.

A prevention model funded outside government

The Foundation’s programs, including its work with Football SA, are financed through corporate and philanthropic support rather than recurring government funding. Its rollout with Football SA was backed by SA Power Networks, and separate school-based programs in the state’s Far North have relied on grants from philanthropic trusts.Both the Perpetual Foundation’s Kevin Barnes Gift Fund Endowment and the Fred P Archer Charitable Trust have funded the Foundation’s work in that region.

The State Government’s response to the Royal Commission into Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence, released in December 2025, commits $674 million over ten years to a 136-recommendation reportstructured around themes spanning structural reform, workforce and community education, crisis response, and establishing a foundation for prevention, delivered by Commissioner Natasha Stott Despojaafter four women were killed in the state within a single week in November 2023. The Commission’s focus on domestic, family and sexual violence is distinct from the youth bullying and alcohol-related violence at the centre of Sammy D Foundation programs, but its response includesan expansion of abuse prevention programs to support behavioural change for people who use violence, alongside prevention and awareness activities aimed specifically at young people.

Separately, the Department for Education’s own violence prevention program, developed after a 2022 ministerial roundtable, has directed a $6 million Safe and Supportive Learning Environments Plan of Action toward schools, afterreported violent incidents in South Australian public schools rose 50 per cent in 2023, with more than 13,000 critical incidents recorded that year. The department has since reportedits first decline in secondary school critical incidents in 2024, a 4.5 per cent reduction from 2019 levels, along with a 7.3 per cent fall in suspensions and a 20.8 per cent fall in exclusions in 2025. It also noted thatviolence in primary schools has continued to rise since the pandemic, and that physical violence against teaching staff, the large majority involving primary-aged students, climbed from 273 incidents in 2021 to 662 in 2024.

Evidence from earlier rollouts

Sammy D Foundation programs delivered through junior sport have previously reported strong self-assessed outcomes. An earlier three-year rollout of a related program through SANFL Juniors, a separate competition to Football SA,reached up to 12,800 young players and their families, with 98 per cent reporting increased awareness of the impact of one-punch violence and 89 per cent reporting they avoided a violent situation because of the program.

A national evidence guide on preventing violence through sport, compiled by Our Watch, notes that69 per cent of Australian children and 87 per cent of adults took part in sport or physical activity over a twelve-month period, while also pointing toa lack of research assessing the effectiveness of such approaches, and the need for more robust evaluation of primary prevention programs within sport settings.

Clubs taking part in this year’s round have again been supplied with blue armbands for junior teams, with Football SA and the Foundation asking clubs to share images from the weekend under the round’s official hashtag.

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