A Southern League Club Is Fighting To Avoid Closing Its Doors At Season’s End

A Southern Football Netball League club with deep roots has finally come to terms with its demise due to a lack of players and funding. 

Ricky Logan, president of the Sandown Cobras, knows that the team will likely fold in the next month.

Sandown FC, which was founded in 1961, is no longer a part of Southern's divisional football but now competes as an independent Thirds team.

In his opinion, his club has "delayed the inevitable" ever since.

"Unfortunately, it appears that this is the club's final year," he remarked.

Because of our location and the surrounding community, we don't have a lot of regular members from the neighborhood.

No one on our team is from the area.

"If you want to attract fellas to local football, you have to offer them cash.

As the saying goes, "I think we have delayed the inevitable for a long time."

Logan claims that the Cobras have struggled to attract players and sponsors due to a lack of financial resources and a "less and less football-orientated" region.

"It's all of the above," he concluded.

Companies had it rough during Covid and helped us out while they could, but this year a few of the companies we picked up are having trouble making ends meet.

"When you only have one team playing, you don't make much money over the bar and canteen because you're only running for a couple of hours on Friday night."

Logan acknowledges that some of the club's most dedicated players will be missed, but stresses that it is precisely this core group that has propelled the team to its current standing.

To paraphrase, "It's definitely going to leave a hole in a few blokes' lives, not having a club to go to anymore," he remarked.

Some of the guys use the Tuesday and Thursday night football practices as a form of rehabilitation.

The difficulty is that only a small number of guys feel that way, rather than the thirty or forty who make up the club's core.

Over the years, their numbers have fallen to the point where we now have only a small remnant.

Logan, who lives in close proximity to several local clubs, acknowledges the valid cause for concern about the sport's future but remains optimistic that all of them will survive.

The problem isn't unique to our club, he noted; other groups face similar challenges.

To keep paying players, bringing in new players, paying coaches, and so on, they likely have a bit more money than we do.

We ran out of money to pay gamers for a few years and could only pay them the bare minimum.

You can tell right away who your devoted gamers are and who aren't when you don't pay them.

It's a domino effect: "Guys leave for clubs that pay a little more, and then you don't have any new ones coming in."

Logan has been in contact with the Supers team Eastern Warriors in an effort to continue the tradition of Saturday games featuring the iconic red, white, and blue outfit.

So that the Cobras' legacy might continue, perhaps with an over-35s team, "We're talking with the Supers club that plays out of our ground and trying to work something out with them," he said.

A weekend without the Cobras' jumper wouldn't be the same, but it would be better than nothing.

The president of the Southern Football Netball League, Lee Hartman, has said that it would be a shame to see Sandown close its doors and that the league could use a jolt of new volunteers.

Because of their aging population, "they've been a year-to-year proposition for the last few years," he said.

It's not feasible for the team to survive if the majority of its players have to commute from elsewhere.

We've been trying to keep the club going, and if we're going to be successful, new volunteers will need to step up, as the current ones have been there for an eternity and can only do so much.

We will continue talking to them, but I am aware of where they stand and in whatever division they currently play football.

With only one game left in the regular season, Sandown sits in second place on the Thirds ladder.