Under the bright, warm sun on Eastgrove South, roughly 30 children from Yass, Bungendore, Murrumbateman and Goulburn had “a great four-quarter hit-out”, according to the Murrumbateman Football Club (MFC) Facebook page. 

MFC president Andy Ingold said that despite fewer numbers than estimated, the children loved the opportunity to turn out and play. 

“A couple [of teams] couldn’t make it,” Mr Ingold said. 

“I mean, there’s cricket on at the moment as well, and it’s the first year that the AFL’s organised it.

“But we had two really good games of footy out here with kids that had never played before.” 

The competition was organised to give children between the ages of nine to 12 the opportunity to play football, since there was previously no real option for children of that age who were unfamiliar with the game. 

Junior AFL development coordinator for the ACT, Luke Martin, was extremely pleased with the results of the first round. 

He was especially pleased to see the enthusiasm the kids showed in representing their homes. 

“You could see they were really proud to represent their town,” Mr Martin said. 

The AFL is looking to expand the same style of competition to reach a broader range of regional areas, Mr Martin explained, and it began in the ACT. 

“We’ve done something similar in the ACT,” he said. 

“What we’re aiming to do [with the Lake George competition] is expand to six or seven teams.” 

Mr Martin also said that it was not unusual to see similar initiatives start off slowly with regards to player turnout, but he was confident that the numbers would increase throughout the tournament. 

The families who turned up had a lot of fun. 

To accommodate the disparate amounts of players, Yass teamed up with Murrumbateman and Goulburn combined with Bungendore, and the MFC on Facebook said that “the adults had nearly as much fun as the kids with some excellent barracking from the sidelines.”

The Lake George competition will travel to Yass next weekend, on Saturday March 3. 

That fixture will be followed by a bye, before another round in Yass on March 17.