By Tyler Lewis
Lachlan Balzary’s tenure as Officer Football Club president will begin with the task of building relationships.
Not only will he continue to progress the relationship with the ever-growing junior footy club and ROC Netball Club’s, but develop a relationship with the competitions new addition – Hallam Football Club.
“I have tried my best to assemble a diverse committee featuring some new faces, some returning life members and past players,” Balzary said of his new committee.
“Hopefully we can assimilate the past, the present and the future moving forward.
“We really want to build the relationship with our junior club and other stakeholders, the community groups that use the facilities.
“As far as football goes (on field), hopefully our recruiting and new coaching staff take the reins there, hopefully we’re more focused on – and I am big on this – providing a good family environment for all people to be a part of.”
Within his role, Balzary will continue the emerging connection between the football and netball club, while also addressing whether they would re-connect names.
“Yep, definitely,” he said sternly on the focus of the relationship.
“I will preface that by saying Nick (former president Nick McLennan) started it by hosting a joint presentation night for the season just gone, and that night was a huge success.
“I will be working very closely with the ROC netball president moving forward, having joint functions and whatnot.
“Probably not at this point (linking name back to ROC), we changed our name to Officer to identify with the area, we’re definitely looking at a few things in terms of a broader strategic plan to tie ourselves back to our history, that being ROC.
“We’ve got ROC still on our jumper, underneath our numbers, so we still pay homage to our previous amalgamation as Rythdale Officer Cardinia.”
As a result of some competition movement and the Roos being relegated last season, Officer will not play the likes of Pakenham, Beaconsfield, Berwick, Narre Warren or Cranbourne in season 2023.
But Balzary – in conjunction with Hallam – is working towards a stand-alone marquee match between two local sides within the Division One flight of Outer East.
“We as a club are really excited to welcome the Hallam Hawks into the competition,” he said.
“We obviously understand building a new club is exciting and having a local derby, I suppose, is an exciting thing for us having unfortunately being relegated and missing Pakenham and a few things like that.
“Having that local derby with Hallam is going to be critical, we’re hopeful of making it a marquee this season.”
Officer has added an abundance of recruits, headlined by former Rowville key-forward Mark Seedsman, and will have a meet the coach day this weekend.
