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Kicking goals with kids
By Barry Rollings
Volume 50, No. 13, July 26, 2007 |
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ADD SOME COLOUR: ABBM Kate Goggins and ABSCO Tash Wilson are part of the ADF women’s AFL team who visited some of the children at Canberra hospital recently.
Photo: LSPH Yuri Ramsey |
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Half a dozen members of the ADF women’s Australian football team spent time recently to help colour the day for some of the patients in the paediatric ward at Canberra Hospital.
It was a first for the team, which was in Canberra to contest the 2007 Australian Football League’s women’s national championship from July 9-14.
The visit was the idea of ADF coach W02 Kim Beasland who arranged a similar visit by the full team to the women’s hospital in Adelaide when the championship was staged there in 2004.
“Six players made the visit today (July 5) but we would have liked to bring the whole team,” WO2 Beasland said.
“That was not possible because of the logistics, the close confines of the ward and nature of the illnesses of some of the patients.
“It nice to have a bit of playback in the form of community involvement and commitment to return something to those who quite often support us in most things we do, including operational deployments.
“It’s an opportunity for the girls to become involved in that process. They are either mothers, potential mothers, are contemplating motherhood, or just have an affinity with young children.”
WO2 Beasland and his visitors were shown over the facilities and were able to interact with some of the patients, assisting them with drawing, colouring and painting.
One young patient initiated the players into the mysteries of using one of the latest computer consoles, the up-to-the-minute Wii.
Captain Starlight (from the Starlight Children’s Foundation Australia) hovered in the background as the women put a little sunshine into the lives of the young indisposed. |
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