Dubbo and District Devils Football Association (FA) returned to the Kanga Cup in 2024 with their largest ever cohort of squads, ahead of a highly anticipated tournament in Australia’s capital.
The Devils setup is located four and a half hours inland from Canberra, Dubbo represents the largest city in the Orana Region, with the Devils making up the top talent throughout the association’s reach.
It’s an area that Coach and Western Youth League Coordinator Matt Stonestreet says is very much into their local football.
“[It’s] a big population, we feed with regional areas as well, towns that come into the Dubbo football association,” Stonestreet said. “There’s 11 different clubs, it’s the biggest populous of sport in Dubbo, and then our academy teams with 11 full teams, we’re the biggest represented academy team with all teams filled in the Western Youth League.”
Looking at the makeup of the Dubbo teams sent to compete at the Kanga Cup, the best talents within the local area are brought together to represent the Football Association in an academy setup, who then face off regularly against top quality opposition from the surrounding regions.
“So, these are our academy teams, they play in the Western Youth League back home in the Central West,” Stonestreet said. “We’ve got 11 teams in that competition between the boys and the girls and then they’re selected out of all the club teams, so we hold trials every year and then take them as the academy players, and then they play at the higher-level competitions.”
For the Devils, although they’re not a club side, going into these tournaments there consistently remains a central approach and philosophy surrounding their players.
“We consider ourselves like a club, we operate like a club,” said Stonestreet. “Our philosophy is just that the kids enjoy it, that’s the first and foremost thing that we want, and if they enjoy it that shows through our trials, the number of players that we’ve got turning up every year.
“We had over 300 kids try out last year just to try to get selected spots, so it shows that it’s at that level where players want to be involved.”
Having sent seven different outfits from Under-10s to Under-16s, Stonestreet’s group represents arguably the pick of the bunch, finishing winners in this year’s Under-10 Female Plate final, off the back of a dominant league season.
“The Western Youth League is non-competition, but they did actually finish top if you look at the unofficial ladder,” Stonestreet said. “They did do that last year as well so they’ve been very successful, a lot of the players from the team last year went up to the Under-12s.
“They’re the best bunch of girls, training is always full, they’re always ready to go, so there’s never been any issues.”
Off the back of their first Kanga Cup victory in 2023, the coach says that his group’s achievements inspired the increase in Dubbo squads to enter this year’s edition.
“Yeah the Under-10 girls took out theirs last year, and I think that publicity we’ve put back through the sport at home got a few other coaches excited about the prospect of it,” he said. “So the Under-10 girls and the Under-11 boys have come back this year and then we’ve brought six other teams with us.”
Amongst the glory of cup success, the real victory is the experience itself for this Under-10s side, one for which Stonestreet cannot praise enough.
“It’s our second year so [we’re] loving it,” he commented. “We’re looking to come back again next year no matter what happens today, and I think we’ll have more teams next year that want to come back, so a bigger contingent but the whole experience, the whole week’s been fantastic.”
Words: Sam Watson