Teams - Amateurs
The Gosnells City Amateurs are a Sunday team that play in the Amateur Third Division in Western Australia. They play their home games at Walter Padbury Reserve in Thornlie and also train on Tuesday and Thursday nights at the same venue.
The club is looking to appoint a 1st team coach for our 3rd Division
Amateur side for 2008. We have a great bunch of players at the club, who
are more than capable of playing at a higher level but prefer to play
Sunday's and have more than enough numbers to complete the teams. Kevin
Francis, a long term servant of the club, has agreed to take on the
reserves and there will be plenty of others to offer a helping hand
throughout the season. The Amateurs are a very social bunch and you will
have a great time, they just need the correct guidance to help them achieve the success that is just around the corner. If you are interested or require further information please contact club President Tony Pritchard on 0403 009 214, or via the club email address on the contacts page.
Combination first team and reserves who both finished 5th in the 2007 season
History
The Gosnells City Amateurs rose from the ashes in 2005 after folding in the 2004 pre-season. Fraser Howieson returned from a couple of years overseas and set about reassembling the Amateur squad that had scattered when the team folded in 2004. Many players left the club and played for other sides while some remained and formed a Social team. The nucleus of this social team and a few of the prodigal sons returned in 2005 and Fraser managed to convince Tony Pritchard to coach the team. Some remnants of the social team remained particularly the one night a week Wednesday training sessions.
2005 was a relatively successful season particularly taking into account that the eventual winners of the entire Amateur Cup, North Lake finished runners up to a very strong Royals side. Gosnells finished third and highlights of the season were beating eventual champions Perth Royals 4-2 at home, thrashing fourth place Rockingham 5-1 early in the season and two very good close losses (both 2-1) to North Lake later in the season.
2006 was nowhere near as successful due to a number of factors. The core of the side and coincidentally the players that featured in the awards at the end of 2005 left the side for varying reasons (travel, playing Saturday football and injury) and the season was seriously interrupted with a good portion of the first team either moving overseas or travelling extensively overseas particularly during the World Cup.
As a result Gosnells finished second bottom with a very unsettled side often containing four or five players under the age of eighteen.
However football was put into perspective on 30 July 2006 when the lads in the team learned the tragic news that their team mate and good friend Martin Boyle was tragically killed in a car accident while working away in New Zealand. The weeks fixture was cancelled and coincidentally the next fixture was against Morley United a side containing two of Martin’s best childhood friends. Gosnells, a side struggling to get a win for the majority of the season put together a season highlight performance and won 9-1.
The season ended with Tony Pritchard being elected club president and Fraser Howieson deciding to concentrate on running his family business and as a result a new coaching duo of veteran players Kevin Francis and Kevin Nugent took the reins. A decision was made to re instate training twice a week to Tuesday and Thursday nights and the squad are now preparing for the 2007 season.
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