Elsie Lange
The footy was exuberant, music was loud, outfits were bold – and in almost everyone’s hands at the Reclink Community Cup on Sunday was a Sunbury Rotary Club (SRC) snag – mustard, onions and all.
Much-loved and missed during the pandemic, the cup was back raising money for Reclink, an organisation aimed at creating opportunities for disadvantaged Australians.
The Melbourne institution had a triumphant return, with artists Parsnip, Izy, Ausecuma Beats, Cash Savage and the Last Drinks and Private Function taking to the stage. This year’s theme, Let Love Rule, was in honour of Gunditjmara/Bundjalung musician Archie Roach AM, the title taken from his seventh studio album.
Rotarian Paul Craig has been involved with Reclink in Sunbury for years and said SRC raised nearly $2400 in total at Collingwood’s Victoria Park on Sunday for the non-profit.
“We bought, cooked and sold over 1300 sausages, consumed probably 70 loaves of bread, and in the vicinity of 30 kilograms of onions, and I don’t know how many hundreds of drinks,” Mr Craig said.
He said the demand for the iconic Australian delicacy was hot and the barbecue went “flat out” all day.
“I’ve been on big events where we’re cooking and it’s busy, but it usually goes in waves,” Mr Craig said.
“When the gates opened at 11, we started serving – we sold our last sausage at 6pm, and we had completely run out.”
Cheerleaders donned red, black and yellow for the music industry’s Rockdogs, or red and white for the community radio stations’ Megahertz, shouting and dancing, shorts very short, sparkles flying and mullets aplenty.
And while the match was played – the Megahertz defeating the Rockdogs by two points 7.6 (48)-7.4 (46) – a line of punters snaked around the SRC’s barbecue tent.
“What a great day, you look at what Reclink does. We went on the basis that if we made no profit, as long as we’re providing a service for Reclink, that would be great,” Mr Craig said.
“Last time we went there the guys said, ‘Oh, we’re supposed to be fundraising but we didn’t make anything’, I said let’s not try to make anything, let’s just try to be a service.
“The end result is that I think everybody’s happy,” he said.
