Ms MACKLIN (9:57 AM) —I want to congratulate the Heidelberg Football Club this morning. The club has just celebrated its 125th season. That is a pretty extraordinary achievement, given that we have only just celebrated our 100th year as a nation. Our local football club is otherwise known as the Tigers. Mr Deputy Speaker Nehl, although you are not a Victorian, you would know that there is another very famous football club called the Tigers with the same colours: yellow and black. But Heidelberg became the Tigers way back in 1885. It is wonderful that we have seen this extraordinary club achieve remarkable success. They have had 22 senior grade premierships and countless appearances during the finals. I was very pleased to be able to join them recently down at the club to celebrate their enormous success.

I imagine many Australians now know about the Heidelberg Football Club because we have a very famous Tiger from that club: Blair McDonough. He was, of course, the runner-up in the Big Brother program. Many of you may have met Blair through the Big Brother program. I have to say he certainly was the most popular person down at the celebrations a few weeks ago. He wore his Heidelberg uniform every Saturday that he was in the house on the Big Brother program.

I want to congratulate those who are currently giving so much to the club: Dave Batchelor, the president, and Matt Sheahan, the club historian. That is the case with all clubs around Australia, but for those of us in Heidelberg most of all we congratulate those who do so much work for local sport. We know what it means to be able to have these outstanding people who support our children, whether it is through training, through the mothers running the stalls and kiosks or through the dads around the field looking after the kids on Saturdays and during training times. To all of those people who do so much for local sport and particularly to everybody at the Heidelberg Football Club, congratulations for 125 years. I am sure that they will be going on to many more successful seasons as the years go by.