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Sport Nation
Sunshine Football Netball Club and Le Mans Toyota are Good For Footy
SEN • July 31st, 2025 4:30 pm
Sunshine Football Netball Club has long been a cornerstone for its local community in Melbourne’s western suburbs.
From humble beginnings, the effect it has had on many people’s lives has been far reaching and positive as a crucial social and sporting outlet for a thriving and growing community.
The Kangaroos have prospered and stayed strong where many didn’t, due to the loyal and caring people who played, barracked, worked and volunteered for “The Team We Love”.
Known as Sunshine YCW, the club started in 1942 in the YCW Association’s under-18 competition, playing on the site of the old Sunshine High School on Ballarat Rd near the top of Snowden St where the Victorian University Trade School now sits.
There were no facilities, no changing rooms, no showers and no social rooms, just a playing field with goalposts, and they wore green jumpers with no collars obtained from Pentridge Prison by Our Lady’s Sunshine parish priest Fr Frank Ryder.
This early period produced the club’s first VFL player, Pat Hand, who lined up in 62 games for Footscray between 1943-46, with well-known names Frank Wheelahan and Gerald Farrell having been early coaches.
Sunshine YCW went into recess in the late 1940s but returned in the under-16s in 1959 at Barclay Reserve in Albion.
The Kangaroos moved to Kinder Smith Reserve at Braybrook in 1962 and entered their first open age team in the YCW competition the following year, with the under-17s claiming their first premiership in 1964 and the seniors following suit in 1966.
They won two senior, two under-18 and one under-17 flag by the end of the decade and took their first A Grade title in 1976 before women’s football pioneer Debbie Lee drove their first female team in 1993 – the forerunner of the VU Western Spurs that made it as far as the VFLW.
They won two senior, two under-18 and one under-17 flag by the end of the decade and took their first A Grade title in 1976 before women’s football pioneer Debbie Lee drove their first female team in 1993 – the forerunner of the VU Western Spurs that made it as far as the VFLW.
Sunshine dropped YCW from its name in 2000 and changed again last year to recognise the netballers who were a big part of the club in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s before returning in 2018, and completed the ultimate glory last year in the Western League, winning Division 1 flags in seniors, reserves and under-18s.
It would not have been possible without the support of Le Mans Toyota and the Toyota Good For Footy raffle.
“Le Mans Toyota has sponsored our club since 2011, and it’s grassroots support like this and our involvement with the Good For Footy raffle over the past 11 years that has helped us raise close to $90,000,” president Chris Gatt said.
“The money raised, along with the help of Le Mans Toyota, helps benefit our juniors as we can funnel funds into buying equipment and uniforms, so our costs are kept to a minimum for the families involved in our club.”
