Nangwarry Football Club president Shane Ploenges is the toast of the football fraternity across South Australia after winning the 2024 SANFL Volunteer of the Year Award for his outstanding contribution to grassroots community football.
Ploenges was presented with his award before more than 300 people at the SANFL Community Football Volunteer Awards ceremony at Adelaide Oval on Friday night.
They recognised the tremendous contribution of dedicated volunteers at their local football clubs or leagues throughout the state in 2024.
Ploenges has been president of the Nangwarry Football Club in the Mid South Eastern Football League for a remarkable 26 consecutive years, taking on the role in 1998.
This was also the year that Ploenges was awarded player life membership of the MSEFL.
Prior to taking on this leadership role with the Saints, Ploenges had played with Nangwarry and Penola and was captain-coach of Tarpeena.
During this time, he has also taken on additional roles as recruiter, club umpire, managing the bar and much more.
He has worked tirelessly at the club to ensure its future sustainability, even through some challenging times with little on-field success.
The Ploenges family and the club suffered a number of bereavements in this calendar year.
He was also responsible for guiding Nangwarry through the complete rebuild of its clubrooms several years ago after they were destroyed by an arsonist in 2019.
In more recent times, Ploenges also has been instrumental in developing female football at the club and starting Nangwarry’s first women’s team.
He was one of seven finalists shortlisted from an outstanding 223 nominations for the 2024 Hostplus SANFL Volunteer of the Year Award.
In accepting his award, Ploenges thanked the Nangwarry Football Club, the club committee and his family for supporting the “immeasurable” number of volunteer hours required at the club every week.
“There’s always something that’s just got to happen, but I have got a good committee and support from family,” he said.
“My daughter Tamara is secretary of the club so she keeps me in line and that helps.”
Speaking to the SANFL, Ploenges explained his motivation.
“I have always been about giving back and making sure there are opportunities for kids to continue to play footy,” he said.
“With all small country towns and the limited number of kids that are about these days, to be able to stick it out with low numbers and help keep giving kids a game of footy I think is important.”
On of his proudest moments was the ending of an eight-year A Grade losing streak in 2022.
“To finally break that drought was pretty special and continuing to be a pretty resilient group and come through that and starting to become more competitive again has been pretty good,” he said.
Ploenges is proud of how the Nangwarry community pulled together to support the club to get back on its feet after the arson attack which caused $500,000 in damage.
“Wattle Range Council let us use the swimming pool next to the club so during the winter we were using their rooms so we still had somewhere to go after games and the Forestry and Logging Museum let us use one of their rooms for functions,” Ploenges said.
“We had to get insurance and so forth sorted first and we were lucky to get a government grant to go along with that and we had to get plans drawn up for all that.
“We are only a small town, there is no local pub or anything like that so the club is a meeting place, so to get that back up and running and have a facility that is pretty modern is great.”
Now in its eighth year, the SANFL Volunteer of the Year Award aims to highlight those individuals who have provided outstanding voluntary service to community football in South Australia.
As the SANFL Volunteer of the Year, Ploenges was awarded the David Shipway AM Medal by Mr Shipway, a longstanding football administrator who is also SANFL Community Football director.
Ploenges received an accommodation package as well as AFL tickets as part of his prize.
