Forest Killarney Shamrocks Under-9 are flying the flag for one of the largest clubs in Sydney’s north at the 2024 Kanga Cup and have emerged successful in the young side’s first taste of tournament football.
Forest are based in the Northern Beaches of Sydney, in the Forest area, a location that Manager Lucas Williams says is football-enthused.
“It’s a huge football community, fairly strong,” Manager Lucas Williams said. “Manly [United] is the local rep team, and they’re traditionally really strong in both girls and boys.
“The Forest area has a couple of clubs around there Belrose, Wakehurst, Forest Killarney, which is where we’re from, and again just thousands and thousands of kids playing so football is really strong.”
With only one representative in the National Premier League (NPL), the Sydney club remains one of the most attractive options to play at in the area, despite the popularity of rivals Belrose-Terrey Hills Soccer Club and Wakehurst Football Club.
“One of the issues that the Northern Beaches has got is that they only have the one rep team, thus there’s only so many players that can really get into there, but I suppose the benefit of that is that clubs like Forest Killarney get really strong as a result, because they get to retain a lot of their players,” Williams said. “The facility that we have is one of the better ones, we’ve got the synthetic [field], a nice clubhouse, that kind of thing, and yeah [we] would certainly be one of the bigger clubs in that area.”
In terms of their overall approach, the Manager of the Under-9s side representing Forest at the Kanga Cup says that the focus on continuing growth is the club’s overriding ambition.
“The approach is if you don’t kind of keep up then you kind of get left behind,” Williams explained. “We’ve got a very forward-thinking committee which helps… they’re taking it very seriously and are aiming to be one of the top clubs in the area.”
A key fragment of the Forest’s philosophy is the development of the younger age groups, and after being afforded the opportunity to test their team at a national competition, the Under-9 Shamrocks’ success in the Mixed Plate division underlines the good work being done back home in Sydney.
“A lot of club football sides are taking their SAP [Skills Acquisition Program] and their juniors really seriously, we have a company called Prodigy that has come in and are helping out with the kids this year, and in fact the Head Coach has actually taken on this team,” the Manager said. “Our team, the Under-9s, are aspiring to be good players, and the Kanga Cup is obviously a popular one on the calendar that a lot of people know of.”
Having experienced their first tournament environment this year, and achieving success in the Kanga Cup, the week away in Canberra has provided plenty of positives for the cohort of talented young footballers within the Forest ranks.
“It’s interesting, in our local comp there’s probably three or four really strong teams, so coming here we weren’t sure where we’d fit into that mix,” Williams said. “We’ve had an excellent run, played some good football, come across some good opposition so the standard’s been really good, and we’ve just taken our chances.
“It’s their first tournament football, and one of the thing that we’ve been talking about as parents that we really like, is that in Under-9s, you don’t play for competition points, but here there’s a different slant on it because you are trying ultimately to get into a final, to win a cup, so the boys have really relished that part of it as well.
“The experience I would have to say has been excellent, we had a good team bonding night last night at Kingpin, and we’ve had a couple of dinners, gone to the AIS [Australian Institute of Sport], so while the football’s been really good and a lot of fun, the teams done a lot of stuff together as well, so yeah they’ve really enjoyed it both parents and players.”
Words: Sam Watson
