Author: Peter Shaw

Has been involved with Touch football since 2000 after return from playing semi professional rugby in England. He is the founder and president of Princes Park Touch.

Park life Thursday week 13 2025-26

Park life Thursday week 13 2025-26

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Categories Social Competition

Tonight’s announcements:

All teams

Hopefully you noticed the flags of StoreLocal Northcote flying every Thursday. Everyone needs storage at some point in their lives (even touch associations), these guys are the best in the business and offer 10% off for PPT members.

https://storelocal.com.au/locations/melbourne/self-storage-northcote

Mens teams

Tonight is semi finals and friendlies for men’s teams. Next week (the 26th) which will be the last week of mens. All men’s teams will be playing and are expected to field a on that night whether they make the grand finals or not. Presentations for mens will be on the fields at the end of that night (the 26th) and will incorporate a free BBQ. Please lock it in as we are first and foremost a social organisation.

Park life Wednesday week 14 by StoreLocal

Park life Wednesday week 14 by StoreLocal

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Guys,

this is the penultimate Wednesday for Summer 2025-26.

Presentations and pub

Next Wednesday is our last for this season and our end of season celebration will be held at our pub sponsor the Great Northern Hotel. There will be extra drink vouchers and so get along there.

Winter Season

Registrations are open for our for our 2026 Winter season. We will be back in our Winter home in Royal Park North (500 metres north west of these fields)

Switch 

SWITCH, strengthening women in touch is a free touch and fitness program for women offered by PPT in conjunction with VICHEALTH. It starts in early April. It is a fun way to learn touch or improve you skills. Details are on the website or ask us for more information

Wednesdays on the run home

Wednesdays on the run home

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Summer 2025-26 is reaching the business end. This Wednesday is week of 14 of 15. Here are some points for the run home:

All teams play

The most important point, for those teams who are new, is that if your team misses finals, your season is not over. All teams play in week 14 and week 15, whether they are playing finals or not (those missing finals are playing friendlies), as per the player members faq we fixture and expect all teams to play as participation and socialising are far more important than the result.

Draws

The draw for week 14 – mixed semi finals and friendlies (for everyone else) is here:

Draw: https://princesparktouch.com/social-competition/wednesday-draw/

Uniforms

Please make sure your team is in uniform, we will be making sure referees are enforcing the penalty provisions for teams not in uniform in finals (as they should have been since week 3).

https://princesparktouch.com/membership/#lh_faq_shortcode-list-62177

Team Lists

If you are team captain of a team playing finals please review your team list. It can found like this. Only those on the team list, who’ve played 4 games, and are a member of Princes Park Touch Association can play finals matches (exemption may be granted on request).

I suspect many teams have players who have not yet done their membership onboarding, those who have not should start here:

https://princesparktouch.com/register/

I strongly advise you to get everyone to do it as they will be removed from the field until they have. If someone believes they have completed but are not appearing on the team list feel free to get them to reach out to me directly.

Get along to the pub

A reminder to socialise after the match, either bring some refreshments to drink in the park, or grab a voucher , they are available win or lose, and get along to our sponsor the Great Northern Hotel.

End of season breakup/presentation night

Please schedule a team dinner now for our final week (week 15 – Wednesday the 25th of February). Attendance is expected for all mixed teams playing in grand finals and highly encouraged for everyone else. All teams will be playing that week, and we shall likely arrange an extra field to avoid the late slot. Presentations and will kick-off at the end of the night.

So lock in dinner at the GNH that night, it is always a great night.

See you all on the field

Membership and onboarding

Membership and onboarding

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Categories Social Competition

From early 2026 we are going to be requiring anyone who wishes to play regularly in 2026 to have gone through the process of explicitly becoming a member of our association.

Therefore if you’ve not done so already please start the onboarding process here.

https://princesparktouch.com/register/

The whole process end to end takes 4-6 minutes and only need to be done once ever. All captains have already done this so most bugs should be ironed out. But it is by no means a finished product. So any feedback psychologically for our association and technically for my startup is much appreciated.

Who needs to do this?

Every regular player in our mixed and men’s competitions.

Please parents should onboard their children. We suggest the use of plus emails for children so that all communications are directed to the parent, more info here.

Is this new?

Only in an administrative sense. The purpose of our association has not changed nor have the principles and processes listed in the FAQ. Previously captains would undertake to ensure the whole team were familiar with them. We are now making that agreement explicit

Why are we doing this?

There are two main reasons (and many other minor ones) namely:

  1. To be legally compliant with the law and our constitution. Whilst most clubs don’t do this properly that is no excuse we aimt to be (and believe we are) the best social sporting organisation in Australia. Part of that is proper compliance
  2. To ensure every player is actually aware of and supports our aims and processes. Whilst most captains did a reasonable job on ensuring this, it has not been 100% and that was not ideal.

How are we going to enforce this?

This will be hard as we will need to onboard another 500 odd regular players to the 120 who have already done so. This will require the assistance of our captains. To enforce and incentivise this there will be a number of approaches.

  • Once I’ve done the final grading split in the new year any team with at least 8 players will get a bonus point every week until finals
  • All fixtures and some other content will require the user to be logged in and a member.
  • We will periodically check games and any team with more than two players who are not members are have not previously flagged this with the committee will not be able to win the game.
  • Only teams that have at least 8 PPT members will be allowed to play finals and only PPT members will be allowed to play finals.

I actually hate having to use a carrot and stick approach as my general view is that everyone at PPT should always do what is asked of them/the right thing but this is an important step for us and it can’t drag out.