A stalwart of the St Joseph’s Soccer Club, George Callegher has been presented with a Community Recognition Statement by Barwon MP, Roy Butler. The certificate congratulates and acknowledges the achievements of people or groups in the community, recognises honours and awards, and expresses words of thanks.
Mr Callegher has dedicated a large part of his time since immigrating to Broken Hill in 1966 to volunteer at St Joe’s, since having coached for more than 30 years and in a senior coaching role with the local club since 1994, taking his teams to 25 premierships and last year, coaching his 500th senior game.
Speaking of the achievement, Mr Callegher said, “this is a great appreciation from the Parliament and government of NSW”.
“This is fantastic, and it’s been a dream of my life to be able to achieve such a recognition. What can I say? Thank you very much from the bottom of my heart,” he told us.
“I’ve had some beautiful time with the kids, all the players. They might be 40, 50 years old today, they’ll always be my family. All the children that I coached, maybe 1500 to 2000 children, they’re all my children, boys and girls. And furthermore, I have to add the time that I’ve had with the Junior Combine, it’s been a great experience, one of the experiences that I really emphasise that a lot of coaches should do. When they finish their career or playing career, take on the role of coaching, you will have such a beautiful time.
“The cups that we’re winning, it might only be a $1200, $2000 cup, but it’s no different from the trophy at the World Cup because you can still drink out of it at the same time!” he laughs.
MP Butler said, “it’s actually very humbling for me to present George with the certificate because of his decades of contribution to a community group. It’s contributions like this that make our communities better places to live.
“If we didn’t have people like George doing what he’s doing, coaching, getting people involved in sport, getting them active outdoors, you wouldn’t have as much public amenity, you wouldn’t have as many things for young people to be involved in that are pro-social and to form relationships, learn all those values you get from playing sport as well, in terms of teamwork, in terms of communication, there’s just so much that comes from sport.
“You have really got to take your hat off to someone like George giving such a big chunk of his life to just helping people be involved in that. I really want to acknowledge that and as I said, it’s very humbling for me.”
