Brisbane Roar made a player appearance at AC Carina FC on Friday evening where the football club’s juniors got to meet two Brisbane Roar stars.
Carlo Armiento and Matt Acton had a meet and greet with the juniors followed by a Q&A and signing and photos session.
These appearances are part of the club’s aim to reconnect with the community and to show our support to local clubs.
AC Carina Vice President Josh McKee spoke about the recent restructure of the club, with a focus on improving their MiniRoos program.
“We’ve always been a community club and we’ve re-aligned and made sure that’s at the forefront, and focused on time and investment to bring our MiniRoos program back to where it was,” McKee said.
“With everything and COVID, we took a bit of a hit, and we hadn’t taken the time to really knuckle down and get our MiniRoos back to where they were. We’ve been able to add about 40 kids from last year which is awesome, we’re looking to do the same as we go on,” he added.
“And the best thing is that we’re seeing a lot more of our younger girls the 6, 7 and 8 age groups playing MiniRoos football which is fantastic.”
McKee shared that AC Carina is focused on increasing female participation in the grassroots space, especially in the journey from MiniRoos through to divisional age groups.
“Our main focus is females growing in the club. Our resources and our time and effort are focusing on getting our 6 to 9’s girls into it so that when we come into that divisional age group, we’ve got girls that can stick together and feel comfortable. That have also played with each other for three, four years,” McKee said.
“We had a really good Senior Women’s program like a lot of other football clubs, where they have their two-year period and then move together somewhere else.”
AC Carina have been running the Little Dolphins program during school terms to introduce younger players to the game and encourage them to join teams at the club after completing the program.
“We’re currently in Term 3 of our Little Dolphins program, the introductory football program that we run in school terms. We had a two-year break with it but now it’s come back, and we’ve seen upwards of 15-20 participants each term,” McKee said.
“We were able to graduate some of them from Term 4 last year into our Under 6 team this year, the perfect plan and exactly what we’re looking for.”
McKee would like to highlight the importance of volunteers at AC Carina, and encourages parents, supporters and the local community to lend a hand at the club if they can.
“The importance of people involved or parents, supporters, helping as volunteers. In a community club it can be a struggle to do things, to actively make improvements. Volunteers are the bread and butter of this community club and how many hands make light work,” he said.
“That extra two or three people helping each weekend takes a lot of stress off other people.”
