Family

Lynwood Ferndale’s Steve Mountford speaks to Cameron Palmer

For the best part of 40 years, Ferndale Park, the home of Lynwood Ferndale Football Club in the Perth southern suburb of Ferndale has been the one constant in an area that has seen both change as a community and change within the Perth Football League.

The second constant, that is the people, and the family names.

Within the suburbs of Lynwood and Ferndale, streets have changed, schools have changed, the communities have changed. Once the only football club in the area competing in the then West Australian Amateur Football League, Lynwood Ferndale now has up to a dozen competing clubs in the Perth Football League in close proximity as the nearby area has seen rapid growth and expansion.

While these changes may have had an impact on the overall size of the club, it has only highlighted the importance that community plays and what football families mean to football clubs.

As Lynwood Ferndale Life Member and former Club President Steve Mountford says, that as much as the area has changed, the people haven’t.

“People don’t move from here, it’s one of those real weird suburbs,” said Mountford.

 “It’s become an aging area, and for us, it was the kids that were a big part of the club, have now got little kids coming through.”

This close connection to community means that one of the great achievements of the Lynwood Ferndale Football Club, has been getting multiple Life Members from multiple different families across multiple generations.

“I think one of the biggest ones here is the amount of people whose children have actually become players and then gone on to be committee members and life members,” Mountford said.

A quick look at the Lynwood Ferndale honour board confirms exactly what Mountford says.

Surnames like Beaton, Boyd, Hayes, Leeds, Mountford, Sammels, Shaw, Stone and Wainwright all show up on the Lynwood Ferndale Honour Boards once, then twice, sometimes three and four times. Across both Life Membership and Committee presence, this is a club that has been proud to have not just people involved, but families involved.

“The initial groups, it’s funny, they don’t live local now but they all come back to this areas,” Mountford said.

“Their grandsons are playing and that keeps those families still involved.”

This speaks to the foundations of the Lynwood Ferndale Football Club and the way it has embraced the theme of family since its inception. Lynwood Ferndale is one of the few clubs where the junior and senior club have been intricately connected. While the Lynwood Ferndale Amateur Football Club was formed in 1979, the junior club was formed some years earlier in 1970. In 1990 the two combined to become Lynwood Ferndale Football Club, with an Executive President as well as the junior and senior retaining their own President.

It was a unique set-up that has worked successfully for a long period. That connection of junior and senior club no doubt played a role in creating a club, where it was not just about the people, it was about the families.

Generation after generation of Life Members are testament to that.