Page 604 - History of Parkside Football Club (1897-2017) Editied Version Completed_optimized

Parkside Football Club 1897/2017

2000

The new millennium brought many changes to the local football in the west.

Kevin Hillier sheds some light on these days.

“The new millennium started with the League looking forward and bringing about many changes.
There were new faces on the Executive but, most importantly, The Footscray District League was no
more and the Western Region Football League was born. And a fairly smooth delivery it was; in the
Annual General Report President Rex Swann wrote:

Geographically the League has expanded from its original twelve team concept that virtually
represented the Footscray District area. In 1987, due to the FDFL amalgamation with the Western
Suburban Football League, clubs from out of the Footscray District area were brought into the
League. Besides these additional clubs, other new clubs from the western suburbs were also accepted
into the League, making the League geographically the Western Region Football League.

While that was entirely true, it was not the only reason for the name change, according to Rex:

When we changed the name we had one vote against us to change the name. Footscray (the suburb)
went into a rowdy period with drugs and that’s when it hit the fan…a lot of our sponsors started to
drop off. Our marketing person said to me, “Look, we’re sort of getting into a bit of trouble, they’re
dropping off”. I knew most of them and I went to see a couple and they said, “We can’t sponsor
Footscray, not with the drugs and all that”. They said, “Why don’t you do what Footscray Football
Club did, why don’t you go up and see their president”. So we went up and spoke to them. They had
changed their name from Footscray to the Western Bulldogs and their sponsorship went up
overnight. I thought that’s the plan. We bought it back and wrote papers on how much our money
had gone down. We put it to the clubs, got letters out, and it was approved at a special meeting with
one objection. That was sort of a dicey time; there was a lot of dispute up there with that name. We
put down three names. We had votes and the clubs were all blueing over it and so I just got up and
said, “Look this is gonna be the name of the bloody League, all in favour and against it”. They ummed
and ahhed but they did it and that was the night we got the vote.

Mark Penaluna was general manager at the time:

I thought, and the Executive thought, that the League had evolved. It was much bigger…than just
Footscray. At the time we had Parkside and Spotswood, and more of those inner suburban sides; it
evolved and got Werribee and St. Albans and those sorts of clubs in, like Hoppers Crossing. So the
name Western or certainly along those lines…a Western feel...made more sense and certainly helped
with the marketability of the competition as well. The Western area was growing so much more that
people were much more likely to get involved under the name of Western, because they didn’t seem
to want to get involved under the name Footscray. It had a bit of a stigma to it at the time and
probably still does.

Once a Parksider, Always a Parksider