This Is What We’re Supposed to Protect

South Hobart Football Club’s First U5 team.

I try not to always talk about my club.

I’m conscious of it when I write. I want the blog to be broader than South Hobart, to speak to football more generally, to avoid becoming an internal newsletter or a running defence of one place.

I know I’ve been writing a lot lately about what’s not working.
That has its place.

This nearly didn’t get written for a different reason.

It felt too close. Too personal. Too “my club”.

But then this happened.

Last weekend, South Hobart Football Club fielded its first ever Under 5 team.

And today, the club turns 116.

Those two things sitting side by side felt like something worth stopping for.

116 years is a long time

Clubs like South Hobart carry history whether we acknowledge it or not.

We’ve spanned two world wars, although not without struggle. There were years when teams were hard to field, when life quite rightly pulled people elsewhere.

And still, it found a way to continue.

That matters.

Because history in football isn’t built on perfect seasons. It’s built on persistence.

Generations of players, volunteers, coaches, families.

People who lined fields, washed kits, argued, celebrated, and kept it going when it would have been easier not to.

I’ve spent 20 of my 67 years in and around this club.

That’s a big chunk of a life.

And I felt a quiet sense of pride standing there last weekend.

This is where it actually starts

Not in boardrooms.

Not in constitutions.

Not in strategic plans.

It starts here.

Six kids in oversized shirts, one not really listening, one staring off somewhere else, one with an arm around a teammate because someone told them to stand still.

Boots that don’t quite match. Socks slipping down.

No one worrying about formations. No one talking about pathways.

Just kids turning up to play.

We spend a lot of time in football arguing about structures.

This is what we’re arguing for.

I’ve been avoiding writing this

Because I didn’t want it to sound like promotion.

Or pride.

Or bias.

But maybe that’s the point.

Maybe we’ve gone too far the other way, where we’re so careful not to sound self-interested that we forget to say when something is actually good.

This is good.

Not because it’s South Hobart.

Because it’s football.

It’s easy to lose sight of this when you spend time in the parts of the game I often write about.

Why it matters

A 116-year-old club doesn’t stay alive by accident.

It survives because new kids keep walking onto the field.

Because someone signs them up.

Because someone coaches them.

Because parents bring them down on a cold morning.

None of it happens without the people you don’t see.

Because a club makes space for them.

That Under 5 team is not just another age group.

It’s the next 116 years.

One day, one of those kids might run out for the senior team.

Or they might not.

That’s not really the point.

This is the point

Not just what’s broken.

But what’s quietly working.

What keeps showing up, even when the noise gets loud.

Because for all the frustration, for all the politics, for all the things I’ll keep writing about…

This is the bit we’re supposed to protect.

Everything else should serve this.