By Romy Stephens
If there’s one man that’s dedicated everything he has to community football, it’s Robert Tregear.
The former Mount Evelyn Football Club president received a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) on 26 January, for his service to Australian rules football.
Mr Tregear’s involvement in the industry has seen him take on a range of roles over about 45 years – from a community-level club committee member right up to the AFL Victoria Chairman.
For a huge majority of those years, the roles he took on were all voluntary.
A football player himself in the early days, Mr Tregear played at Box Hill and Lilydale before turning his attention to coaching.
“I was never much of a footballer, I mainly played reserves football,” he said.
With Mount Evelyn Football Club in need of a junior coach in 1972, Mr Tregear took the opportunity to get involved and soon found himself on the club’s committee.
“In those days the annual meeting at the Mount Evelyn Football Club, we used to nearly fill the hall up there,” he said.
“We had a committee with 35 people on it.”
Come the late 1970s, Mr Tregear began to ramp up his involvement in football as he commenced work at the Croydon Leisure Centre.
“During that time I had Essendon Football Club training with their junior squad,” he said.
“I got to know Kevin Sheedy and a few others through running junior coaches courses.
“When he (Kevin Sheedy) was appointed coach at Essendon, he said I want that stadium every night.
“North Ringwood was the recruiting zone for Essendon so he had kids like Gary O’Donnell, Paul Salmon, Kevin Walsh and Peter Bradbury.”
While still at Mount Evelyn and the Leisure Centre, Mr Tregear was also elected onto the executive committee at the Eastern Districts Football League and he became the founding director of the Victorian Metropolitan Football League.
He then spent some time away from Mount Evelyn before returning to the club in 1984 and serving as President for three years.
During that time, the club won the inaugural Division 4 Eastern Districts Football League premiership.
In 1989, Mr Tregear was elected as President of the Eastern Districts Football League where he accomplished one of his proudest achievements – developing the League’s headquarters.
“The first thing we did, and probably one of the best things I ever did, was we built the headquarters that are still there now,” he said.
“That’s 30 years it’s been there and it’s still serving their needs.”
Following his time at Eastern Districts, he became a board member and then Chairman of AFL Victoria – formerly known as Football Victoria.
He was also the Chief Executive Officer of the Western Region Football League from 2010 to 2017.
Despite never expecting to give up so much of his own time to the sport, Mr Tregear said he wouldn’t change it for the world.
“It’s been great, it’s been a lot of fun and I wouldn’t swap it for anything,” he said.
“I’ve met some really good people especially at Lilydale and Mount Evelyn back in the early days.
“It’s just funny where life leads you.”
