A lot of community support – including an interest-free loan from a local businessman – has got the Kyneton Football Netball Club out of a horror five-year financial stretch that culminated in the club being unable to play its players or local businesses for services.
The club was forced to go public with its financial woes of some $200,000 mid last year.
Club president Karen O’Sullivan said it had been a tense time for the club.
“We had to go forward to avoid a crisis,” Karen said.
“We’ve had a lot of support from the community – personal donations, gifts from different organisations…”
Club treasurer Clive Fanning said there was now a clear budget and plan and major sponsors had signed up with the club again this season.
Clive, who has background in the finance industry and has been club treasurer since July last year, said what was most important was to get the community to trust the club again.
“The club was living beyond its means, it continually had to put creditors off,” Clive said.
“It needed to stop for a minute and have a look and see what could be done about it.”
And that is exactly what the club did. They went public with their financial troubles and support flowed in.
But it still left people asking why the bad financial situation had occurred in the first place.
Karen explained that after the senior team went into recession in 2013 there were considerable costs involved getting the seniors back on the field.
She said that in 2015, 16 and 17 the club accumulated debt, some of which went on infrastructure.
For example, while the electronic scoreboard was made possible through a grant, the club ran up costs to have it powered.
There was a similar situation with the lighting for the club’s showgrounds home oval.
The club still owed money to Macedon Ranges Shire Council for some of the ‘behind the scenes’ elements of the lights. But that debt was cancelled as of last week. The Kyneton RSL donated the final $5000 to the KFNC to pay its ‘lighting debt’ off to the council.
Karen said, thanks to wonderful community support like this, the club was going into this playing year with no creditors and plans were in place for a budget surplus this year. This, coupled with the club’s dedicated executive committee and a very positive outlook for on-field and on-court activities, means 2019 is shaping up to be a very good year indeed for the Kyneton Tigers.
