At the recent VAFA Season Launch, former president of the club Trevor Ludeman was honoured with a prestigious Certificate of Merit in recognition of the magnificent contribution he has made to our club and to amateur football in general.

Trevor has done it all at our club, from playing and coaching, to taking on the presidency, spending over a decade on the committee, and writing the club’s history, but his greatest achievement was to have the foresight to establish a junior club to ensure the club’s future.

Trevor came to the club in 2004, when it was known as North Old Boys, as a star recruit for our Club XVIII. He might have been on the wrong side of 40, but with a distinguished career in county footy behind him, he still dominated in the ruck. By 2006 he was the coach of the Club XVIII and when he finally hung up his boots he had chalked up 52 games for the club.

It was his recruitment to the club’s committee in 2007 by then-president Terry Scanlon to take over the top job that would have the greatest impact. Trevor immediately identified that, despite North Old Boys having formed an alliance with St Patrick’s College Ballarat, the club faced some enormous challenges if it was to survive and thrive, and he set about making real changes to the club with boundless energy.

Within a year, Trevor had single-handedly established the Brunswick Junior Football Club, with the aim it would be our club’s feeder in the future, and arranged for its acceptance into the Yarra Junior Football League. It took another year to get enough players, but when an Under 10s team took the field in 2010 it was Trevor who was the coach, a position he would retain through to Under 17s, by which time the Brunswick Junior Football Club had grown to 18 teams and 350 players.

For a few years Trevor was president of our club and the junior club, after which he continued to serve with merit on both committees, including ours until 2018.

When his boys finished in the juniors he coached them at our club in the Under 19s in 2018 and 2019. And in 2021 when our men’s reserves coach pulled out on the eve of the season, who else but Trevor stepped into the breach?

In 2013, Trevor also found the time to write and publish the club’s history book to mark our 50th anniversary.

Other contributions by Trevor have included serving as a club umpire for many years and being part of the VAFA Divisional Advisory Group.

He is a life member of our club and the Brunswick Junior Football Club, and is rightfully known as the “father of the juniors” and “saviour of the seniors”.

Well done, Trev!