Sport and Activities – Listings

This film of Buchan Football and Netball Club,  stemmed from a school holiday workshop held at the Buchan Neighbourhood House in September 2012.

The sleepy East Gippsland township of Buchan and it’s love affair with football is an enlightening story on the role which sport plays in regional Australia. As young football player Kyran Greenwood points out in the film that football is the main social gathering in the town, it is the one unifying force which brings people together- it is something to do!

With 176 fans on the Buchan football team’s Facebook page, in a town that has a population of around 200 people, the Buchan football team is an institution for young men in the town. Rhonda Coates of the Buchan Bulletin dates the Buchan football team back to the late 1800’s, when multiple sons of large families (up to 17 children in a family!) could easily fill multiple teams in the district. These days there are not enough boys in Buchan to make up the under 16 team, which includes players aged 8 to 16 from Buchan and the neighbouring towns as far as Lakes Entrance.

According to Rhonda, who is also the town’s go to historian, you can trace much of the family history of Buchan through the sporting teams, as often these were the only name records and photographs of townsfolk which were kept.

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/63800720 w=400&h=300]