THE Demons will bring the power in the coming years after receiving a grant to upgrade the power infrastructure at their clubrooms. Milawa Football Netball Club will receive $320,884 from the state government to upgrade lighting to 130 lux LED lighting on the oval including site preparation works, four new poles, a three-phase power supply upgrade and lawn restoration works. Milawa FNC president Steve Williamson said the power and lighting upgrade was well and truly overdue. “In my whole time there, 15 years, we’ve been needing the power upgrade and lighting upgrade, and it’s finally happened thanks to a few people putting in a fair bit of hard work prior to me getting back on the committee,” he said. “We’ve only got single-phase at our clubrooms, so on Thursday nights we have to monitor what we’re using because lights draw too much power, then if you put something else on we could trip everything out. “Same as on game day, there have been a couple of times in the last few years where we’ve blown a fuse and I’ve had to come off the ground mid-game to fix it up. “Our lights are pretty average too, we just lost another light towards the end of last year and we had to replace that, another $2000 to fix that up.” Williamson said the three-phase power supply upgrade was first on the to-do list, which will allow other upgrades to take place within the clubrooms. “The plan is to try and get the three-phase sorted out so at least we get that side of it ready, and then we can do all of our major works after that,” he said. “That can allow us to eventually upgrade the kitchen and everything like that, because we haven’t been able to do any upgrades to anything because of our power shortage. “I don’t think we’ll have lights up this year at this stage during the season.” The Milawa FNC clubrooms was one of seven facilities across Victoria to share in more than $1.4 million from the latest round of the state government’s Country Football and Netball Program. The program is a partnership with the AFL, AFL Victoria and Netball Victoria and has invested more than $41.5 million in over 580 country football and netball infrastructure projects since 2005. It helps local councils replace and upgrade ageing grounds and facilities for football and netball clubs across rural and regional Victoria, because everyone deserves high-quality facilities no matter where they live. “Footy and netball clubs are the heart and soul of the Hume Region,” Member for Northern Victoria Jaclyn Symes said. “This boost will go a long way to helping clubs cater for the growing numbers of people keen to get involved in grassroots sport, providing more opportunities for locals to get active and play the sport they love.”
