Oran Park Rovers Football Club (FC) represent one of the most prominent clubs in the Macarthur region of New South Wales, a reputation that verifies the inclusion of the outfit in Australia’s most prestigious youth tournament for the first time.
The club’s decision to send their Under-15 boys to compete against the nation’s best sides was partly due to the previous experience of the Rovers’ coach at the Kanga Cup, one for which left him with nothing but good memories.
“The coach was promoting the Kanga Cup within our team and our club, and obviously I’ve known about the Kanga Cup for many years, it’s the largest in the southern hemisphere, so yeah we wanted to be a part of it,” Under-15s Manager Dominic Tacca said.
The club represents the fastest growing area in Australia, making it a fairly new suburb in South-Western Sydney, where the boys compete under the Macarthur Football Association (MFA) banner.
Along with the growing population, Oran Park’s football fever has never been more evident.
“The club itself is ten years old this year, so it’s certainly a new club but one of the biggest in the area,” Tacca said. “We’ve got about 1200 registered players, so it’s absolutely huge.
“Not only have we got 1200 players but neighboring suburbs have got 800, 900, [so] the area is absolutely booming.”
Tasked with representing the area, the Rovers will be showcasing the key principles of the club’s approach to football throughout their matches in the Under-15 Plate category of the cup.
“Our philosophy is fair play,” Tacca explained. “[We have] a heavy emphasis on juniors, under sixes, under sevens, [for] all those ages there’s multiple teams.
“It’s a new area with new families, young families, young kids, but they also try to develop from within and promote from within, and every kid in our area aspires to play for the Macarthur Rams, being an NPL side, so it’s all about fair play and promotion from within.”
Having developed many outstanding players through the Rovers system, the Under-15s side have seen plenty of their top talents poached by elite academies, which has made life difficult at times for the squad continuity.
“Over the years we’ve lost players to NPL [National Premier League] clubs, not only the Rams but also MFA, the association league, but because it’s pretty central to other NPL clubs like the Camden Tigers, there’s been a lot of player movements over the years,” Tacca said. “It’s been a bit of a challenging year for us, it’s a new-ish type of team, we lost a few of our players last year again to rep teams, so we are just constantly building each year.”
Despite their difficulties, Tacca says the team heading into their first Kanga Cup experience are a rewarding cohort to manage, and guarantees that they will be a good watch.
“They give it their all, that’s the main thing, that’s all you can ask for, as a coach or manager,” he said. “It’s a positive environment, they all get along very well, we try to play an expansive type of game, not just booting the ball and hoping for the best, playing from the back with a heavy emphasis on passing.”
Overall the Kanga Cup experience is one that is expected to live long in the memory for each and every member of this talented Oran Park side.
“They’ve been looking forward to this for a while, especially the ones who haven’t been here before,” Tacca commented. “It’s just good in the sense [that] not only are they playing multiple games every day, but then going back to the hotel and enjoying some time in the pool and the sauna and the spa, so from their perspective it’s like they’re [living] a semi-professional type of life, so they’re absolutely loving it.”
Words: Sam Watson
