Five Victorian schools have shared in a football prize pack valued at over $1,000 after been selected as the winner of the Footy Colours Day competition.
This Footy Colours Day season, AFL Victoria teamed up with the Fight Cancer Foundations Footy Colours Day to encourage all Victorian schools to show their true colours for kids with cancer.
While a number of schools across Victoria participated in the fundraiser, only five were chosen to share in the prize.
Congratulations to the following schools who have been selected as our winners for 2018:
- St Paul’s Anglican Grammar
- St Vincent de Paul Primary School
- Merrijig Primary School
- Heatherwood School
- Grey Street Primary School
Their Footy Colours Day stories can be found below, along with some incredible snaps from their events.
St Paul’s Anglican Grammar 
We have enjoyed Footy Day for many years. Footy Colours Day gives us a formal reason to raise funds for a great cause as education is clearly in our wheelhouse.
Our campus is ELC to Year 10. For two hours, Year 6 students hosted 11 activities from handballing, to Specky marks and many activities in between. Some students hosted kinder for a ‘one hour’ action filled event. This was enough for little people. Enthusiasm was infectious, but the energy expended very quickly. Students rotated through the activities with their team songs blaring out across the oval. Danced, sang, boo’d opposition songs but all with a fantastic attitude of participation. Pies soothed the hunger. Afterwards, Year 10 students supervised rotations so that the Year 6 students could enjoy participating in activities. Our Year 6 students recognized the importance of the fund raising AND the joy that was created through their efforts.
Heatherwood School
Heatherwood School is a special needs school in Donvale. We have numerous kids who have a multitude of illnesses, conditions and disabilities. Footy Colours Day brings together everyone at our school and is always looked forward to by everyone (particularly the staff). We decorate our staffroom, have long distance kicking competitions run by our Yr12’s and classes do the Footy Colours Bingo and colouring in. We offer footy foods at the canteen and our kitchen supplies staff a footy themed morning tea. We also run assemblies when kids get up and sing their footy club’s theme song. Next year it will be an entire school assembly! It’s truly amazing to see a student, who has a multitude of illnesses and in hospital often, donate money to such a worthy cause when their own cause is just as worthy, given what some of our kids go through. Footy Colours Day is one of the highlights of the year. I cannot stress enough how valuable this day is to our school in terms of both student and staff morale, along with the satisfaction everyone gets from giving to such a worthy cause.
St Vincent de Paul Primary School 
All students and staff dressed up in their favourite team colours and brought a gold coin donation to help the Footy Colours Day cause. Students had a hot dog or meat pie with sauce to celebrate their team colours. Students participated in a range of school activities from the Footy Colours Day website including; colouring competition, bingo, word search, footy kicking competitions and finding extra facts. Students and staffed also got involved by having a photo inside our 3D St Vincent’s Instagram frame. It was a wonderful day filled with smiles and healthy competitions raising money for a wonderful cause.
Merrijig Primary School 
Merrijig Primary School is a small rural school in the Delatite Valley, metres from the Delatite River. The school has beautiful views of the Victorian High Country framed by Mt Buller and Mt Timbertop. The school is 18 kilometres from Mansfield and close to Mt Buller and Mt Stirling. This year, our school celebrated Footy Colours Day with a vengeance. All of our 41 children and staff were asked to come along dressed in their favourite football colours, and if they didn’t support a team, to dress colourfully. We borrowed equipment from our local Auskick, including footballs, specky and tackle props and witches hats. Cameron, the coach of the local football team, – the ‘Mansfield Eagles’, came along to run the activities. He was ably joined by Chris and Tony. The children warmed up with exercises, played ‘rob the nest game’, did speckies, tested out their tackling skills on the tackle man, kicking, marking and handballing practice. After an hour of running and laughing it was time to rest and recuperate, before taking part in a whole school football match. Everyone loved it despite a few footballs to the upper torso. After working up an appetite, lunch was served, the menu being 10-inch hot dogs, with rolls and sauce. A great day was had by all, and they were so pleased to have had so much fun and helped to fund the cancer fight at the same time.
Grey Street Primary School 
“Footy Colours Day poem”
Grey Street Primary School’s Footy Colours Day
On Footy Colours Day we gathered around,
Cheers and screams were the only sounds.
Grey Street students keen to play,
AFL Footy throughout the day.
Colours displayed in clothes and hair,
Though black and white has a fair good share.
Footy activities around the school,
Having fun, it’s the golden rule.
Some Football games, hand-balls too,
Plus a footy lunch for us to chew.
The mighty meat pie full of flavour,
Add the sauce and let it savour.
Today is full of fun and games,
But Grey Street students have other aims
Everyone makes a gold coin donation,
To a worthy cause, Fight Cancer Foundation.
We can all agree that today was a blast,
But like all good days, they go too fast.
Footy Colours Day, we will remember,
Do it all again, come next September.
To view this article on the Fight Cancer Foundation website click here
