Tara Murray
There will be celebrations galore for the Melton Junior Football Club in the coming weeks.
After starting a female program in 2017, a number of players will turn out for game 50 for the club this season.
Under-15s player Isabel O’Loughlin became the first female to play 50 for the club on Sunday.
Chloe Chiller, Dakota Simo and Shanel Smoult will all play their 50th games in the under-15s (junior girls) this season, while Tia Stone, Drew Mullins, Alyssa Bonehill, Tayla Debono, Tanai Newman-Coverdale, Claudia Sierra and Taneesha Kincaid will reach the milestone in the under-19s (youth girls).
Bloods female football coordinator Jessica Evans said it was pretty exciting for female football in Melton.
“We are five years in now, after we started in 2017,” she said.
“We started with one team and these girls are among our original girls who are still playing.
“We had one team, then two teams and then three. Since COVID it has been really hard to get it back.”
The Bloods have two sides this season, under-15s and under-19s.
They were aiming to have an under-13 team as well, but no other club in the league had the numbers for a side in that age group so they had to combine their under-13s and under-15s.
Evans said for them they wanted to continue to grow female football, not only at their club, but across Melton and the league.
The Bloods celebrated O’Loughlin’s milestone game with a big win against Melton Centrals.
The side sits on top of the table undefeated.
