#tacbandtogether
Last Saturday, we joined 1100 other grassroots football and netball clubs across Victoria in the TAC “Band Together” Road Safety round. All players, across all grades of netball and football wore blue armbands as a reminder of the importance of road safety, looking out for your mates and making safe driving decisions.
As we move into the back end of the season, where the weather has turned and the roads can be slipperier or even icy and as we head off to more functions to socialise with our team mates and club members, we encourage our BFNC family to take the time to make conscious driving decisions, as our actions impact not only ourselves, but other drivers, as well as our families and friends.
As a club with a very strong junior competition, the messaging of road safety is also important as a a large number of our footballers and netballers start their driving journeys as Learner drivers. It is extremely important that all learner drivers gain 120 hours of practice in all conditions and we encourage all our Learner drivers at BFNC to use their trips to and from training and to our more remote oppositions to get in 20 hours of night driving practice across the football/netball season. By imbedding road safety messages to our juniors now, we hope to eliminate deaths and serious injuries on our roads in the future.
“As a community football and netball club we encourage active participation in the mission to eliminate deaths and serious injuries on our roads. It takes all of us to make this happen. We need to ensure we promote messages which affect us all. This is from drink driving, speeding, learner drivers, distractions, drugs, fatigue and vehicle safety.
We are a family and we all know someone or we have been deeply affected by one or more of these tragedies.
We can no longer sit by and say or do nothing.
Your family is our family”
Scott Penning, BFNC Club President
As part of the campaign to bring the Victoria roads death toll down , the TAC also encourage all club members to visit howsafeisyourcar.com.au to make sure your current car or your next purchase meets the highest safety measures.
The messaging of road safety is a personal one for us as a club, as one of our longstanding and highly respected senior players Jai Robinson, along with his parents Norm and Leanne tragically lost their brother and son Luke in a road accident in March 2010.
Since then the family have been strong advocates for the TAC’s Road Safety messaging and even shared their story through the TAC”s Ripple Effect campaign in 2010.
In 2019 Norm spoke to our player and supporter group about the importance of road safety, dangers of speed and the impacts of Luke’s death on the family.
As part of the Band Together Round the TAC Club Rewards Program is back, giving football and netball clubs the opportunity to earn a share in funding by participating in the mission to eliminate deaths and serious injuries on our roads.
As part of the program, all AFL Victoria aligned clubs across regional Victoria and in the metropolitan leagues can take part and earn up to $10,000 in funding by promoting road safety to their community.
Our club has applied for one of these TAC grants, as as a club situated on the outskirts of the GDFL region, we feel road safety should be one of our key messages for our players and supporters. We want to get you to and from training and games safely and educate you on the responsible choices of drink driving and driver fatigue and teach our younger players the importance of practicing in all conditions, to be better drivers in the future.
A survey has been put together by the TAC and we encourage all players and supporters to participate.
