Australian Football Skool Director Rolando Navas on the impact of floods in Shepparton

Shepparton

Over the years, the Shepparton Cup has been a staple in the football calendar. It is an event which has plenty to offer, not only for young girls and boys but for the community as well.

The town of Shepparton receives enormous economic injection through the tournament and is an ideal weekend getaway for families of all sizes.

The event provides an opportunity for rising stars of the game to participate, with the overall quality of the tournament improving every year. A very successful Goulburn Valley Suns team won back-to-back Cups in the U16 division during 2018 and 2019, which at the time featured Socceroo Garang Kuol, his brother Teng Kuol and Melbourne City goalkeeper James Nieuwenhuizen.

Australian Football Skool (AFS) has been organising events like the Shepparton Cup since 2007 and has seen tens of thousands of great players participate in these events.

Another key Socceroo in Ajdin Hrustic participated in the 2007 and 2008 editions of the tournament, winning all accolades as an outstanding junior player who showed he had the x-factor, even at the tender age of 12.

Unfortunately, due to the unprecedented flooding which had a significant impact in Melbourne and regional Victoria, the Shepparton Cup had to be cancelled for a third year in a row as the facilities and the entire surroundings had been severely damaged.

In an exclusive chat with Soccerscene, Rolando Navas, the founder and a member of the board of directors for AFS, shared some insights from the family-owned business who have been organising the Shepparton Cup for many years now.

He also touched upon their commitment and ways of helping the Shepparton community during this difficult moment in time.

Since the event was cancelled the AFS has partnered with Greater Shepparton Foundation, how did this come together?

Rolando Navas:  The AFS has been hosting the competition in Shepparton for over 10 years now. It started with 40 teams and the highest we have had is 287 teams. We haven’t been able to host the event for a couple of years now due to Covid and the floods earlier this year, so we collaborated with the Greater Shepparton Foundation along with other partners to help the people affected by the floods.

The Shepparton Cup is more than just a sporting event for the community. We teamed up with the foundation in assisting the town to navigate through this unprecedented time and help spread some positivity. This is the biggest football tournament in Victoria, and it means a lot to us.

You mentioned that the Shepparton Cup is more than just a sporting event for the community. What impact does the cup have?

Rolando Navas: It’s massive for the community with respect to attracting over 10,000 people over a weekend. Local accommodations are boosted during the cup weekend, as well as other various local businesses such as sporting outlets, food markets and the surrounding towns of Shepparton due to this influx of people over the course of the event. Grassroots soccer clubs and associations also benefit as they often organise catering for the teams involved and the local food truck businesses also receives a massive boost during the event.

The atmosphere we want to create is more of a carnival type and not just a sporting event. We had planned to have a local expo this year to encourage families who aren’t involved with soccer to showcase their artwork and handicrafts. The cup also provides councils an ideal platform to market themselves and the tourism sectors of Shepparton and its neighbouring flourishes along with creating employment for local contractors, referees and many more to help stage this carnival.

The Shepparton Cup is massive, and we hope to see it return in the near future. What are the things to look out for during next year’s event?

Rolando Navas: There is a massive appetite for the event. I always get asked about it and we continuously look for ways to grow and expand. It is one of AFS’s marquee events and we are working towards getting teams from not just other states but also international teams from New Zealand and Asia to grow the cup into the biggest – not just in the state but also the country. We are also working closely with the council to cater for the demand and have added another venue in Mooroopna which is an eight minute drive from Shepparton. We also want to add more accommodation options for the expected influx of guests for the cup as well. We intend to raise awareness through our other events that run throughout the year and tentatively plan to host the Shepparton Cup in October 2023.  Additionally, we have organised an indoor flood relief futsal event in February 2023 to help the town and bring positivity to the community. Shepparton is our flagship event and we are constantly looking to evolve this further.

AFS also partnered with Shout For Good, how did this come along?

Rolando Navas: They are a great platform to fundraise which doesn’t charge any fee and collects funds sophisticatedly along with being tax beneficial for all donors.  We reached out to them and we plan to work with them for future events. In addition, we introduced them to the Greater Shepparton Foundation which is a charity themselves and all three organisations decided to collaborate to help provide relief for the town.  All the funds being donated go directly to the people who are in need and are recovering from the floods.

You can make a donation via the Greater Shepparton Foundation, which will provide valuable assistance towards the Shepparton Cup and local community.

To donate, please click here.

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Football NSW supports Female Coaches CPD as Women’s Football Surges

Football NSW has used the platform of the AFC Women’s Asian Cup to deliver a targeted professional development workshop for female coaches, bringing together scholarship recipients for an evening of structured learning and direct engagement with elite women’s football.

Held at ACPE last month, the session was open to female coaches who received C or B Diploma scholarships through Football NSW in 2025. Coaching accreditation carries a financial cost that disproportionately affects women, who are less likely to have their development subsidised by clubs or associations operating in underfunded community football environments. Scholarship access changes that equation at the point where many women exit the pathway.

Facilitated by Football NSW Coach Development Coordinator Bronwyn Kiceec, the workshop focused on goal scoring trends from the tournament’s group stage, with coaches analysing attacking patterns and exploring how those insights could translate into their own environments. The group then attended the quarter-final between South Korea and Uzbekistan at Stadium Australia.

The structure of the evening mattered as much as its content. Female coaches in community football rarely have access to elite competition environments as a professional resource. The gap between the level at which most women coach and the level at which the game is analysed and discussed tends to reinforce itself. Placing scholarship recipients inside a major tournament, as participants rather than spectators, closes that gap in a way that a classroom session cannot.

Female coaches remain significantly underrepresented across all levels of the game in Australia. The pipeline that will change that depends not only on accreditation access but on the professional networks, peer relationships and exposure to elite environments that male coaches have historically taken for granted.

The workshop forms part of Football NSW’s ongoing commitment to developing female coaches through scholarships and structured learning opportunities.

Record Pathway Breakthrough: Football NSW Report Highlights Power of Access and Equity

Playing soccer

Football NSW has released its 2025 Player Development Report, documenting a year of significant growth across its Talented Player Pathway programs for girls, boys and regional players, and offering the clearest picture yet of how the state’s talent identification infrastructure is reshaping who gets access to elite football development in Australia.

The report distinguishes between three streams: girls, boys and regional, where each operate under the umbrella of the Talented Player Pathway, which encompasses Football NSW’s Youth Leagues, Talent Support Program and state teams. Across all three, the numbers point to a system that is identifying more players, reaching further into the community, and producing more national team representatives than at any previous point in the program’s history.

A Girls Pathway Coming of Age

The girls program recorded some of its most significant outcomes to date in 2025, headlined by the inaugural Future Sapphires Program, a dedicated development environment for 2009, 2010 and 2011-born players that ran 140 training sessions, 16 high-level matches against boys teams, and identified 20 players for national team involvement across its first year alone.

The Talent Support Program conducted 494 player assessments across 119 club visits, with 117 additional games provided for TSP players throughout the season. At the Emerging Matildas Championships, Football NSW fielded three state teams, with the Under-15s Sky team claiming the championship, the Under-16s finishing as runners-up, and the Under-15s Navy placing third.

The pathway-to-national-team conversion rate was striking. Of the 23-player squad selected to represent the Junior Matildas at the AFC Under-17 Women’s Asian Cup Qualifiers, 13 were from Football NSW, a 56.5 percent representation rate from a single state federation.

“This report does not simply provide data and numbers,” said Girls Player Development Manager Nadine Shiels. “It highlights our progress and validates the standards we set.”

The equity implications of that pipeline are significant. Elite female footballers in Australia, have historically faced a narrower and less resourced development corridor than their male counterparts. Programs like the Future Sapphires and the TSP are structural interventions in that imbalance, reshaping access mechanisms that determine which players get seen and which do not.

Boys Program Deepens its Reach

The boys Talent Support Program underwent deliberate restructuring in 2025, reducing squad sizes from approximately 90 players and five teams to 54 players and three teams per age group, while extending match duration from 50 to 70 minutes. The intent was to raise the standard of the best-versus-best environment rather than simply widen it.

The results support that confidence. To date, 155 players who have participated in the boys TSP have transitioned to A-League academies, with approximately 35 progressing to A-League Men’s competition and a further 30 representing Australia at junior national level across the Under-17, Under-20 and Under-23 squads.

The 2025 season added four Talent Development Scheme matches for players born between 2007 and 2009, delivered in collaboration with Football Australia and targeting potential Junior Socceroos and Young Socceroos selection. The program also hosted the inaugural A-Leagues/TSP Tournament at Valentine Sports Park in December, featuring Melbourne City, Melbourne Victory, Western Sydney Wanderers, Sydney FC, Macarthur Bulls Academy and a TSP Select team.

“Our purpose is clear- not only to identify talent, but to prepare it,” said Boys Player Development Manager Philip Myall.

The Regional Question

Perhaps the most structurally significant section of the report concerns regional development- the stream that most directly addresses the geographic equity gap in Australian football’s talent pipeline.

Talent identification in Australia has historically concentrated in metropolitan areas, where NPL clubs, A-League academies and state federation programs are most densely located. Players in regional and rural NSW face a structural disadvantage that has nothing to do with ability and everything to do with geography. Fewer club visits, reduced access to high-performance environments, and reduced visibility to the coaches and scouts who determine national team selection saliently reflect a systemic barrier.

The 2025 regional TSP involved 241 players across 57 training sessions, 18 hub matches and 58 additional tournament games, with Football NSW coaches present at local association fixtures and regional tournaments including the Bathurst Cup and Country Cup. Regional players were also integrated into Elite Game Days at Valentine Sports Park, directly competing against metropolitan TSP cohorts and A-League academy players.

“The program has continued to enable identified players to progress and be part of the greater football elite player pathway,” said Regional Development Manager Andrew Fearnley, “with opportunity to progress and be identified into national youth teams.”

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