Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

Of course, Deputy Speaker! What is incredible are the number of teams playing in an extraordinary number of competitions across my region. Springbank took home the trophy in both the Central Highlands Football League and the netball league grand finals, at the top of both sports. But there were a huge four finals games for football and six for netball. Local sports enthusiasts were spoilt for choice and, what is more, we are going to do the same all again this weekend, with the Ballarat Football League grand final playing out on Saturday and with three levels of football fighting out finals matches and five divisions of netball doing the same. I should also mention that in the Ballarat Victorian Junior Basketball League the men's under-18 side took home their premiership in a hard fought game. They were the first Ballarat side to reach a VJBL final and it is a great achievement. Well done.

There is an incredible number of people who play sport across my region, but it is really more than that. It is the mums and dads who drive their kids to play, the community groups that get together to put out sandwiches and cut oranges and the juniors who will one day be the senior players who bring premiership medals home to their clubs. It is not a multimillion dollar sporting event. Areas like mine are full of people who give their time and energy to community events.

I particularly want to mention one of those people, who we lost just yesterday. Noel Pidgeon has been a stalwart of the Ballarat community for a very long period of time and I was very sad to learn of his death yesterday. He gave almost 20 years of his retired life to sport and to young athletes in the community through the Ballarat Sports Foundation, which is an organisation that raises money and then donates that to young athletes in our community. He was really fantastic in that. He also served with me on our Local Sporting Champions committee and provided invaluable advice to young athletes across all sporting disciplines for a long period of time.

I think many in our community know how incredibly fit Noel was throughout his entire life, but also how he was very passionate about young people's sport and, particularly, promoting young people from our regions' capacity to participate in state, national and international competitions. He passed away on Wednesday morning. I want to express my condolences to his wife, their three children and their families. They have lost a wonderful person. It is the effort and spirit of people like Noel that we see in any sporting match or any competition that you might watch in the country. Our community is much better for having had him with us.

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