Rest day a win for Avondale AFL players
A local Australian Rules football team is a preliminary finalist after the league in which it plays changed game days for Sabbath-keeping Avondale students.
The Lake Macquarie Dockers finished this past season in fourth and then won a semi final after the Black Diamond Australian Football League—the premier competition in the Newcastle, Hunter and Central Coast regions—changed the division two team’s games from Saturday to Sunday.
Sixteen of the team’s players are Seventh-day Adventists who study at Avondale College of Higher Education in Cooranbong. One, Jordan Hutchinson, is the team’s highest goal kicker. He says the change in game day is a blessing because “Aussie Rules is a Saturday game. Black Diamond is, as far as I know, the only senior league in the state that plays games on Sunday.”
The change is also a blessing for the Dockers. The team beat third-placed Terrigal Avoca by 59 points in the Sunday semi final but, missing its Sabbath-keeping students, lost by 81 points in the preliminary final this past Saturday (September 5).
With a history of fielding teams with Sabbath-keeping students, and with more students wanting to join the Dockers’ roster this year, the club sought to change the days on which its team played. “I’ve worked with the Avondale boys over the past few seasons, and they’ve made it clear they won’t play on Saturdays,” says senior club president Brad Farrell. Adventists call Saturdays Sabbath and observe it as a day of rest and of restoration. “This year, with a larger number of our players coming from Avondale, the impact of their decision on the team has been stronger.”
Farrell believed the Avondale students had to play to help grow the sport on the western side of the lake. It seems the league agrees. Its football operations manager Garry Burkinshaw watched the semi final. “He couldn’t have been happier with how the boys conducted themselves, on the field and off,” says Farrell. “He gave them a massive rap, saying, ‘Looks like we’re heading in the right direction.’”
Hutchinson says the team’s success this season has been good for the students and for the club. “We’ve bonded as a group and given the Dockers a winning team of young men with a good lifestyle and attitude.”
Avondale’s longstanding relationship with the Dockers includes sponsoring its best and fairest awards in 2010.
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