Like 1858
Osborne Park’s Nathan Barnett speaks to Cam Palmer
There is a certain charm that comes from a footy club whose origins lie in cricket. Given the foundations of Australian Rules are linked back to 1858 and Tom Wills inventing a sport to keep cricketers fit across the winter, there is a comfort that over 150 years later, clubs can still form out of a cricket club.
In the Perth Football League, one of the most recent examples of a club’s formation being linked to a cricket club is the Osborne Park Football Club. Having formed in 2007, originally competing in the Mercantile Football League before transferring across to the Perth Football League in 2012, Osborne Park has been a club that has grown both on and off field.
Yet in those first days back in 2007, as Osborne Park President Nathan Barnett explains, it was a pretty simple concept.
“We were just a bunch of cricketers that decided we wanted to start a football team just for fun,” Barnett said.
“At our inception we created a new identity for ourselves.”
From that simple origin, the club has grown to become something that represents its community and is acutely aware of the role it can play in the community and the impact it is having on the young men that play with the club. As Barnett explains, the club takes great pride in developing young men more than young footballers.
“Seeing the different personalities that come through a football club, learning how to adapt, watching young kids come through and grow,” Barnett said.
“I’ve seen guys that came in and they were 19 or 20 and now those guys have gone from ratbags to getting married and starting families.”
Osborne Park’s self-awareness is evidently strong. Just as they acknowledge the positive impact they are having on young men’s lives who play at the club, they are aware of the challenges that continue to be faced by young men and young footballers. The club has already commenced a proud tradition, a Beyond Blue round, aiming to raise awareness of mental health.
The club wears blue jumpers for the day and puts a heavy focus on fundraising for this round, which goes back to helping this noble and relevant cause.
“We are invested in the community,” Barnett said.
“To date we have raised over $30,000 for Beyond Blue and I think that highlights who our football club is, how we contribute to young men and how we give back to the community.”
In the Osborne Park Football Club, is yet another example of the positive impact that the Perth Football League is still having in communities around our city across 100 years.