SOCCER
EARLY this year Rob Vickery was set to scale down his involvement with Langwarrin but by the end of October he’d started his first year as president of the biggest soccer club in Frankston and the peninsula.
The 56-year-old says it was the realisation of Langwarrin’s place in the community that triggered his backflip.
“I sat through a presentation and had a moment when I realised this is a massive part of our community with over 750 players and we simply can’t afford to stuff this up,” Vickery said.
“I’d done a lot of work in many different areas of the club and felt that I had the knowledge to be a good president.
“I went home and spoke to my wife and we knew it was a big commitment but we agreed that I should do it.”
Vickery had decided to grasp the helm of a club edging towards a $1 million turnover while continuing to run the Dandenong-based Horsepower Factory – Australia’s largest performance vehicle workshop – that he owns in partnership with wife Jenny.
He’d also faced a serious health issue in recent years that forced him to step down from the Langwarrin committee so his decision to now add to his workload wasn’t taken lightly.
It was James Bretnall’s decision to relinquish the president’s role at a time when many other committee members were standing down that gave Vickery cause for concern.
“I’d accepted the offer to return to the club as treasurer early this year but I knew that there was going to be a big change on the committee just when the club had grown so quickly.
“To give you an example our junior program has grown by 48 percent in two years.
“I’d put in a lot of work throughout the year to get us financially stable and put things in place for the future and I was concerned that if people without the right skills set were put into certain roles we could quite quickly get into trouble.
“You have to understand the nuances of the club and how the various parts all fit together.”
You also have to understand how to surround yourself with expertise and here Vickery proved extremely adept.
“Part of it was speaking to James and swapping roles with him to continue having his support – that was important to me.
“Then I went about assembling a committee that I thought would be highly functional with business-minded people and I’m confident that we’ve got that.
“Having John Heskins as vice-president was another important part of the puzzle for me – he has so much knowledge of the history of the club and I can always call on him to find out what happened with something in the past to better understand the issue.”
Vickery has outlined to the committee the policy agenda he wants to pursue and has changed some outdated practices at Lawton Park.
This is part of what he called the five pillars in a presentation to his committee with the first pillar being financial stability.
“We have employed a bookkeeper to handle all our accounts and we now have one email for all our suppliers to send invoices.
“That might seem like an obvious thing but traditionally there were emails going to people’s personal accounts and invoices could get missed so we wanted to put a stop to that.
“What we’ve done is put in place a lot of things that we needed in order to manage a club of this size and our reporting and budgeting is now more in line with how you run a business.”
The second pillar of Vickery’s organisational template focusses on an inclusive playing program with two clearly defined pathways running throughout the club.
The community juniors have been rebranded as the development stream where players will potentially feed into Langy’s Bayside teams and the academy stream where the players’ pathway feeds into the club’s junior boys NPL and senior men’s programs.
“Both streams will have the same amount of training and each stream will have a technical director overseeing them.”
The third policy pillar of the Vickery regime focusses on improving engagement with members and Vickery has reflected on the impact of becoming an NPL club.
“When the JBNPL came in it ushered in major change at the club and we want to better engage with our members.
“It may never get back to what it was but we can still be a great family club.”
The fourth policy pillar revolves around member support in the field of mental wellness and awareness.
“It’s something I am passionate about and we have a lady on the committee called Patricia Diano who is qualified in that space.
“We have a member protection officer but I don’t think it’s a position we take seriously enough.
“I think we should and that is something we will focus upon.”
Vickery’s fifth and final policy pillar centres on the management of the club’s communication documents.
“We’ve just implemented Microsoft Exchange across the club and put all our documents into SharePoint so we’ve got file storage and structure.
“For example, if the football department needs specific documents or programs that we want coaches to be able to access we can easily share them out as central documents to everyone.
“It’s all about tidying up that admin back-end and getting it functioning properly in line with the organisation we are now.”
Vickery points to a number of key performance indicators under which the success or failure of his leadership will be judged and principal among them is player retention.
“It’s one of your big KPIs across every program.
“We already know we have high retention levels but how can we maintain and/or improve on them?
“And shortly we’ll release a member survey that will cover football, communication and member support and it will be data-driven so we can get ratings.
“That’s something we’ll release each year so we can see how we’re performing in all these areas.
“Financially our priority is to get to the end of our financial year having achieved our budget and from a football point of view, well, I’m a bit reserved to talk about that as I don’t want to add to the pressure on the (senior) players and coaches.
“But if we can finish in the top four that’s where we would hope to finish.
“I’m a big believer that our senior program is our aspirational program.
“I often say when we were established in 1964 we had a senior team and that is what established everything you see in front of you now.
“We have to put that on a pedestal – it’s the highest level in the club and that’s what draws a lot of people here.”
Vickery reserved special praise for the work of senior coach Jamie Skelly and Adam Poole now the club’s technical director and head of football.
“The work Adam and Jamie have done in that junior space is absolutely exceptional and they are a big reason our junior program has grown as much as it has.
“It’s highly unusual to have a senior coach with so much involvement in the junior program and who understands every aspect of it.
“When the football program is going so well we need to get the off-field stuff in order and if we do that this club will absolutely fly – we’ll just keep progressing and that’s our aim.”
In State 4 news Baxter has been rocked by the sudden resignation of head coach Hayden Taylor after recently announcing that he had signed on for next season.
Taylor would only cite personal reasons for his decision and has dismissed suggestions that the club failed to meet the conditions he laid down recently as prerequisites for him to stay.
“Baxter’s been as good as gold, they really have,” Taylor said.
“I’m continuing to work with the club and players to find a suitable replacement.
“My decision wasn’t made lightly as football is an integral part of my world but I feel this is the best decision for us all moving forward.”
Taylor’s close friend Jamie O’Halloran will continue as the club’s football operations manager but specialist goalkeeping coach Peter Blasby has resigned and stepped down from the committee.
Taylor’s decision caught Baxter president Bray Hodgkinson off-guard as he had announced on 18 November that Taylor had agreed to become head coach for the 2025 season.
“I was surprised but also disappointed for Hayden as I was really excited for him having his chance at senior level,” Hodgkinson said.
“But we support his decision entirely.
“We’re incredibly grateful for his service to our club and want to thank him for that.”
Taylor took over as interim head coach in the back half of last season when his father Kevin “Squizzy” Taylor stepped down from the position.
Meanwhile two local clubs featured in friendlies last weekend.
Langwarrin lost 1-0 to a late Dandenong City goal while Skye had many triallists in its 4-2 loss to Bayside Argonauts.
Here are this week’s friendlies:
Thursday, 7.30pm
Chelsea v Langwarrin U23s, Edithvale Recreation Reserve
Saturday, 6pm
Langwarrin v Dandenong Thunder, George Andrews Reserve
(U19s 11.30am, U23s 2.30pm)
Sunday, 11am
Skye Utd v Mazenod, Carrum Downs Recreation Reserve
First published in the Frankston Times – 10 December 2024
