1979...
By 1979, the club had grown quickly to 4 Men's teams and either 2 or 3 Junior teams.
The club began to hold regular meetings at Ingleburn RSL Club with minutes known to be kept for 21st May (27 attendees and it appears to be the first one for the season), 11th June (7 attendees), 2nd July (15 attendees) , 23rd July (14 attendees) and 13th August (no list made). The AGM was held on 24th September followed by an ordinary meeting afterwards with 15 people attending both meetings.
This rapid growth over a relatively short space of time was beginning to show up problem areas within the running of the club. It had gone from a small operation to quite a large club. The club still did not have a constituton. This caused obvious problems in many areas as to who was responsible and how it would be achieved.
This did not diminish the social side of the club, with many nights being held - one of them I believe gave birth to "BBQ Baz".
The club trained at Memorial Oval in Ingleburn. A gentleman by the name of Steve Kemp (I believe he may still have a shop in Ingleburn) ran the fitness part of the session. He was quite a hard task-master as I remember. He used to give Frank a hard time about keeping up with everyone! Thommo was known to "paint the fence" a few times during the running parts - he tells a great story about this. There didn't appear to any one person responsible for coaching any of the teams.
We struggled in our first season in 1st Grade. We ended the season with 2 wins and 2 draws. This was uncharted territory for us. 2nd Grade finished 3rd and didn't progress beyond the Minor Semi Final (which was held at Campbelltown High School). 3rd & 4th Grades also struggled with many players new to hockey making up a number of the positions. Team captains wrote match reports and submitted them to the Publicity Officer Robbie Wallace, who always seemed to manage to get an article published each week in the Campbelltown Ingleburn News. You can read these in Frank Hirka's book in a separate article.
Team photos were taken of each Grade and all Junior teams by Des Matejka. The sale of them raised the princely sum of $45-00 for the club. Only the 2nd & 4th Grade ones are in our possession. You can see these in following articles. I would dearly love to find the other ones!
Games were played at Leumeah High School, Kentlyn Reserve, Jackson Park, Campbelltown High School, Belgenny Reserve in Camden and Junction Road in Ruse.
The Juniors fared much better. One of the resolutions adopted by the committee was that Juniors would train on the same night as Seniors, starting at 6pm to be followed by the Seniors. It appears that Des Matejka and Ken Morrison were the driving force behind the Juniors. I remember 2 young boys - Steve Howard and Rana Pala coming into our 4th Grade team later in the season and making a huge difference - we actually could score goals now! It appears that the team known as C Grade made the Grand Final and the Presentation Day was held at Cataract Dam for a cost of $90-00!
The AGM was an interesting affair. Moves were afoot to seek sponsorship, field a Ladies team and secure the services of a coach for 1st Grade in the 1980 season. There was also another bombshell to be dropped early in 1980....
