Benalla Football Netball Club has made a promising start to its 2025 campaign, at least in an off-field sense, announcing ForestOne as its title sponsor ahead of the new season.

ForestOne, the biggest independent distributor of wood panel, timber and decorative surface materials in Australia, has committed to Benalla with the biggest sponsorship deal the club has ever made, a move that Saints vice-president Ricky Symes said reinforced the club’s direction.

“I think it's fantastic for us as a club because I think it shows that Benalla can see that we're heading in the right direction and trying to do the right things,” he said.

“We're really trying to engage with the juniors, both netball and football, and we're really big on trying to promote kids from Benalla.

“It's difficult because we compete against teams in bigger areas, bigger towns, that have got capacity to draw more players from Melbourne and probably, realistically, spend more money.

“So, we know that to be sustainably competitive, we need the support of Benalla people, hence we need to support them back.

“We're thrilled that ForestOne has got the confidence in us to commit to the level they have and, for us, it's a positive reinforcement because we know we're doing the right things and heading in the right direction.”

ForestOne managing director Ian Fankhanel echoed Symes’ sentiment, with the investment in the club a commitment to the local community.

“We’re extremely excited to be supporting the Benalla Saints as their major sponsorship partner,” he said.

“ForestOne is highly committed to building a strong future as part of the Benalla community and we wish the Saints a strong 2025 season.”

ForestOne’s sponsorship agreement isn’t the only source of optimism at the club this pre-season, either, with numbers across the board looking incredibly healthy, particularly on the netball side of things, which is significant given the hardship they faced on-court last season.

Chloe Hill’s return to the helm of the side that went winless last year has buoyed the group, with the fact that a homegrown hero has decided to offer assistance yet another sign Benalla is on the way up, according to Symes.

“We've been probably a little bit unlucky, we've had a few that have pulled out late with the netball side of things, but netball numbers are really good and Chloe's doing a really good job, an amazing job,” he said.

“Chloe's one of our, again, local talents, and multiple best-and-fairest winner and one of our better players if not our best player over the last 10 to 12 years.

“So to have her back is amazing, and Bridge her sister as well, they're both committed to the club and travelling (from Melbourne).

“We've got a really good core of younger girls coming through, Chloe's promoted some young talented girls into A-grade this year and going to give them opportunities because, again, it's no different to the football side of things.

“We know that for us to be sustainably successful, the core of our side in both footy and netball have to come from our town, so it's really exciting. Results, as we know with kids, will be a little bit inconsistent, but it's just exciting to see young kids playing at the top level and I'm really looking forward to it.”

While Symes is confident that Benalla as a club is “a place people want to be”, and the promotion and exposure of Benalla youth at senior level will hopefully reap rewards in the future, he knows that success in terms of wins is a long-term prospect.

“We're not really (setting goals) from an on-field or on-court perspective to be honest, it's a bit of an unknown because we're so young,” he said.

“We know the improvement will come, we just don't know how quickly it'll come.

“Culturally, we just want to provide an environment for our netballers and footballers that they want to be in, a fun environment where they know that we can provide an environment where they can get the best out of themselves, both personally and on a football field and netball court.

“And financially obviously, you know, it's a constant battle, but we think we're doing really well off-field as well.

“We can only control the controllables and we just hope that the improvement comes quicker than we maybe expect, but who knows?

“We're so young that we'll just see how the year plays out.”

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Sunday, 13th April 2025

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