We caught up with 2018 McDonald’s Kanga Cup venue host Belwest Foxes who had a crazy week managing the Latham Playing Fields for last year’s tournament. Read all about what the McDonald’s Kanga Cup means for them below, and how excited they are to do it all over again this year!
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Belwest Foxes Soccer Club hosted one of the venues for the 2018 McDonald’s Kanga Cup held from 8-13 July and what an experience it was. It was our first time hosting a venue at their home ground, Latham Playing Fields, and it turned out to be an amazing success.
Players, parents, supporters and coaches all arrived at the oval for a wonderful week of competitive football. We hosted both the Under 10 and Under 11 Shield Competitions with a team coming from as far as Singapore to compete. It was a great atmosphere at Latham especially with the World Cup being held during the time of the McDonald’s Kanga Cup which saw plenty of Croatian supporters out and about. You could hear the Croatian supporters before you saw them with banging drums, horns and plenty of celebrations when Croatia made it into the World Cup final.
The McDonald’s Kanga Cup is held in the winter which saw a nice frost each morning with temperatures in Canberra getting as low as -5° in the mornings and close to -8° in the evenings. This made for some interesting times in setting up the ovals with metal posts and white line marking but our team of volunteers managed to get it done. With the cold morning starts it meant the coffee machine in the canteen was in hot demand with parents flocking to buy a nice hot roasted coffee or hot chocolate for the kids. Unexpectedly the coffee machine ended up breaking after the second coffee was poured so our crew flew into action and managed to obtain some back-up coffee machines to get them through the week and ensure to provide great service to the parents and supporters bracing the cold morning conditions before the sun came out.
We worked very hard to make everyone feel at home with a huge welcome to all the international and domestic travellers. We put on a great spread by providing plenty of food and beverages throughout the week and broke some of our internal records by selling over 15 boxes of 1000 sour strap lollies, 300 eggs a day, over 500 coffees and hot chocolates and so many sausage sandwiches we lost count. One person even bought an entire box of sour straps at halftime for game energy to boost their team and make their forwards speedier in order to get a few goals in the net!
It was an amazing event to be part of with plenty of smiling faces all week from the kids, parents, supporters and visitors. It all couldn’t have been done without the help of the McDonald’s Kanga Cup support staff and resources which made for smooth running of the event and assisted in it being such a success. It was also great to have Belwest referees from their in-house Club Referee Program participate in the pool matches as this allowed them to have more experience, exposure and increase their skillset not only at the domestic level but also at the international game level.
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Belwest Foxes will once again be hosting a venue for the McDonald’s Kanga Cup in 2019 and is sure to deliver another amazing week of hospitality, beautiful playing fields and an all-round awesome and fun atmosphere! Make sure to drop by the Latham Playing Fields from 7-12 July 2019 and say hello to the wonderful Belwest and McDonald’s Kanga Cup staff and grab a coffee. The Belwest barista team have told us they have upgraded and invested in a brand new coffee machine this year which is working well and is sure to make a delicious and enjoyable cuppa!
