Its a cold, wet and miserable Sunday morning and I am standing underneath a rather daggy looking umbrella watching two football teams go head to head on a pitch that looks to have more mud than grass. This match forms part of the VicSoccer Division 2 West league and I am here to watch one team in particular, a team whose red, yellow and green shirts stand out like a beacon in the miserable conditions and go by the name of Trojan Athletic FC.

The team, who takes its name from the Trojan Records record label, had its beginnings towards the end of the first season of the A-League, when a group of Melbourne Victory fans got together for a social game of football on most Saturdays during the summer months in Kensington, an inner suburb of Melbourne. After a while, some of those involved wanted a bit more competition and a mixed futsal team was entered in the local competition.

From there, Trojan Athletic FC grew from being that single mixed futsal team to an incorporated and registered club with VicSoccer and now has three futsal teams and a senior men’s team, whom I am now watching slog it out in the muddy conditions. But why go from just being a group of guys and girls who get get together to play mixed futsal to a fully incorporated football club? According to one of the founders of Trojan Athletic FC, Andrew Egan, himself and the now club president had been contemplating the idea of playing for a local club and giving themselves a new challenge outside of futsal. But they found it difficult to find out what options were available to them in the local area, especially since they didn’t have any contacts or friends playing for other local football clubs. Beyond that, as guys picking up the game some years later than you’d expect, and having been involved in other codes there was a little bit of trepidation about walking into an established club. Egan stated: “We’d been mentioning this problem to a lot of people over that summer and saw that we were in the same boat to a lot of other guys who loved the game but just never took that step to start playing. We were having a heap of fun with our futsal team so we decided to see how far we could take it.”

It hasn’t all been plain sailing for the club with one of the biggest issue being the financial rigours of setting it up. Egan said, “It’s a huge undertaking and requires people to take a bit of a risk early on. It required a lot of help, a lot of pairs of hands and a lot of hours. Thankfully we’ve had a good group of contributors and our friends have been quick to jump on board. Also we’ve started absolutely from scratch, a club run by guys in their twenties and we haven’t had the benefit of a significant financial backer or business contacts to easily secure sponsorship. It’s a credit to the people that have got involved early on that the club is up and running and hopefully now we are out there and the word is spreading, more people will want to get on board.”

Finding a place to call home was also tough ask due to the drought that has affected a lot of local parks in Melbourne. Fortunately for the club, the now call an oval adjacent to the new Royal Children’s Hospital site in Royal Park home, which the team have renamed it Goat Park for their home games. The club’s nickname is the “Angry Goats”, which is in honour of a goat that resided in a community playground adjacent to where they played their initial social games in Kensington. Another initial issue was recruiting enough players to get through a long and cold winter seemed like a problem at first but in the end it hasn’t been a problem as Trojan Athletic attracted more and more players as the season progressed.

The first season in VicSoccer Division 2 West where the results haven’t always been pretty, there has been a number of highlights for the senior men’s team and for Egan, their first ever trial game against Knox United was one of the proudest moment after all the hard work in recruiting players, organising kits and the wading through the administrative side of things. Their first ever win in the league, a 1-0 win over Sunshine George Cross away from home after previously losing 6-0 in their previous encounter, also features highly as one of their proudest moments for Season One.

The game that I am now watching could now be also be added to those aforementioned highlights. Before the game their opposition, Satellite City United didn’t look they wanted to be there as they huddled under a nearby tram shelter to avoid the pouring rain as the Trojan boys ran through their drills. The allocated referee must have seen the conditions and decided it wasn’t worth the effort, so a replacement was quickly sought. Fortunately, one of the spectators was able to fulfill the role and even had the necessary qualifications. The “Angry Goats” went down a goal early on but finished the half strongly to be ahead 3-1 at the break. The rain finally cleared for the start of the second half and the small, but dedicated group of spectators were rewarded with some more goals as they ran out 5-2 winners, which included a hat-trick for coach/centre forward, Liam, who looked like an old fashioned centre forward from the 1950s. For Egan and his fellow Trojans its not always about the results, its all about giving everyone who contributes a go, and this is reflected in every player getting some time on the pitch.

As the players head off to celebrate their win and as the Senior Men’s first season draws to a close, the club won’t be resting on their laurels as they look to establish the current teams in their respective competitions, secure sponsorship and build a reputation for being the sort of club that they set out to be from the start. They believe that this in itself opens us up to a host of opportunities over the long term, women’s outdoor sides, men’s reserves, juniors. According to Egan, “If the interest is there and there are opportunities to get more people involved in the Club, to play sport, meet new people, contribute at an administrative level or whatever, we’ll do our best to facilitate that.”

Neil Zimmerman is the editor of the84thminute and also runs the Victory In Melbourne site. On most weekends Neil can be found at a football match, be it either A-League, Victorian Premier League or a match that he happens to come across whilst walking his dogs.

Photo credit: Neil Zimmerman

For more information about Trojan Athletic FC visit their website at http://www.tafc.org.au