The Greek Community of Melbourne has entered a team for the first time in the All Nations Cup. After a nil all draw with Afghanistan, this Sunday the Greek team faces Iraq.
A big crowd is expected for this match this Sunday given the quality of the players forming the Greece team as it is made up of largely of the best players of Greek descent in Victoria.
"The All Nations Cup is a great way to unite communities and the involvement of the GCM in hosting a team reflects the broad outreach of the organisation. We have received positive feedback from many people on this endeavour.
Bill Papastergiadis says
All facets of our lives are intertwined. Sport is a major focus of our lives in Australia. the GCM needs to play a role in reaching all Victorians and football is a clear pathway for this. So many young boys and girls play this sport. Hence, we can use our involvement in the All Nations Cup to reach so many different people that we never had a relationship with.
One of the key objectives for the GCM is to expand the reach of our cultural and educations programs Nick Dallas and his team are doing a terrific job in regards to continuing to offer educational programs remotely. Many of the kids who play football and train 3 times a week do not have the time to attend structured classes in the Greek language. We can reach these kids now in different ways.
Our additional aim is to reintroduce the Hellenic Cup in 2023. We will work with other groups to put this together and hopefully an announcement can made in the near future
For me, Sunday was a great experience watching the Greek team playing the Afghanistan team. We have so many talented players of Greek background playing for us.
They are training under the watchful eye of George Katsakis and Tangalakis. The match was played in great spirit and the atmosphere at the ground was electric. The hosts (Knox ) remarked to us that were ecstatic of the involvement of the Greece team as it brought crowds and another dimension to the event.
Win, lose or draw, the fact that we are bringing so many players and coaches together from so many top clubs is what really counts. And if we can bring them closer to the GCM, then that is a bonus."
Nick Dallas the education conveyor says “the GCM has acquired experience in delivering greek language courses to different types of student cohorts both online and face to face. Anecdotally we know that many kids involved in sport are generally less likely to pursue language courses. We want to be a bridge in this conversation. Football is multilingual”
Bill papastergiadis thanked Steve and Harry Tsalikidis, Michael Karamitos, Chris Pavlidis and Kon kyranakis for their input and sponsorship of the GCM Greek Football Team. Jorge Menidis has been instrumental in this happening.
Michael Karamitos expressed appreciation to the coaching team of Katsakis and Tangalakis and said “ it’s so good to involve people and players with the GCM who previously were not linked to us. I am hopeful that we can leverage from this to build some of the connections referred to by Nick Dallas”.
