Congratulations to the Wellington players who have already made the train-on squads. Trial dates and Wellington player selections are listed below:

o Under 10s: Jack Whiteley and Jordon Berryman in train-on squad

o Under 11s trial date October 12, Lady Cutler East, Dubbo 3pm - 5pm

o Under 12s: Ngahla Talbot, Jack Thompson and Harry Wighton in train-on squad

o Under 13s TBA

o Under 14s September 28, Hans Claven, Dubbo 4pm - 5.30pm

o Under 15s October 15, Hans Claven, Dubbo 6pm

o Under 16s October 15 Hans Claven, Dubbo 6pm

o Girls teams TBA

This season has gone very quickly with lots of activities throughout the season.

This kicked off with the Harry Williams Tournament, a program developed by NSW Football to develop and increase Aboriginal participation in football in our State.

While the players were participating in the coaching clinics they were fortunate to meet Socceroo legend Harry Williams, along with Sydney FC A League stars Robbie Middleby and Brendan Reno.

Ngahla Talbot and Harry Wighton were in the Under 12s where I was the assistant coach, while Brent Naden and Zeke Griffith played in the Under 14s.

Nick James played in the Under 16s team that actually took out the tournament.

This was the start of a great season for Nick who went on to being in the Opens local Premiers team and taking out best and fairest in the Titans team. Congratulations on a great season Nick.

The club registered three representative teams in the Dubbo competition this season, being the Under 10s, 11s and 14s.

This saw the 10s finish in fifth place missing the finals by one point and the 11s were the minor premiers, affording them the opportunity to participate in the Champion of Champions State Titles. The Under 14s finished in third place and the whole three teams have done our community proud.

The inclusion of the representative teams has allowed our players to develop their soccer and bring their skills back to our local competition and improve our own local competition.

Our club had a number of players in the Dubbo Devils and Bathurst Panthers Youth League competition this season.

Simon Slacksmith was in the Under 10s Dubbo Devils, Jack Thompson in the Under 11s, Mathew Burgess in the Under 12s, Liam Nicholson in the Under 14s, Jessica Berryman, Telisha Madden and Britney Naden in the Under 12 girls.

Jessica has gone on to be selected in the Western NSW team playing in the State titles this school holidays and we wish her well.

Madison Teirney and Cameron Slacksmith, both former Wellington juniors, both played for Bathurst Panthers in the Youth League this season and are both becoming noted in the western region.

The Centre for Excellence was another program run this season which saw a few early teething problems but positive outcomes at the end of the program far outweighed the earlier concerns.

Without the assistance from Geert Woldhuis, Robert Slacksmith, Dillon Price and Tina Kitch the program would not have been as successful as it was. The program is designed for the participants to develop their individual skills, from ball control, dribbling skills, changing directions, passing and kicking the ball properly etc.

The improvement from the participants became evident on the park near the end of the season with a large number of the participants (who attended most of the sessions) gaining confidence and improving their ball skills.

During the Centre for Excellence program and training the Under 10s representative team this season Jessica Kitch, Tara Lee Swainston, Madison Tierney, Cameron Slacksmith, Tyrone Evans, Ngahla Talbot have all assisted.

They have either aidied as understudies or worked with players inspiring some of our local youths and passing on their skills and knowledge.

The committee hopes they continue to stay involved next season if time permits as their contributions this season were valuable to our club. This year we also held a referees’ course with a number of our referees doing a refresher and a large number of participants gaining their level five introduction to the laws of the game.

Thankyou to all those participants who were involved and we hope to see more parents and players involved next season.

The pool of qualified referees has dropped during the past few years with children growing up and moving on, so have their parents, who were previously drawn upon for help.

So we need more parents to step up next season to take some of the load off the few qualified referees in our local competition to ensure a better-run competition.

Overall the success of our local soccer competition can be seen in our teams performances in the Dubbo competitions and another great local carnival this year.

We have finished off with a great sense of achievement for our community. This was made possible with the help of the many parents and players pitching in every week.

Whether you put up a net, helped in the canteen, cooked on the barbecue, refereed, ran a line, were a team manager organising teams, coaching, even picking up the rubbish at the grounds, this all contributes to the great community spirit of Wellington, which is the main ingredient for success, so again thank you to everyone.