The Hurstville City Minotaurs held the grand opening of their home ground Beverly Hills Park on Saturday 9th April, 2011.
Beverly Hills Park has been the long time home of the Minotaurs for their association teams as well as the training ground for all its teams including FNSW Senior teams, FNSW Youth teams, Association teams from Under 6s to Over35s and also women’s teams. However, due to Football NSW ground criteria, the ground was not able to be used by the FNSW Youth teams and the past two seasons has seen the Under 13s to Under 18s teams of the Minotaurs forced to play all their home games at the away ground including travelling twice a season to the likes of Springwood, Nowra and Mt Druitt. The Youth teams did manage to play some ‘home’ games at Seymour Shaw Park or Homebush Athletics Centre at a significant cost to the club.
The Club, through extensive lobbying from its founder and stalwart Peter “The General” Sarikakis managed to work with Hurstville City Council to upgrade the facility to meet FNSW criteria and therefore host its Youth matches at its true home.
The General has worked tirelessly with help from his committee over the past 3 years to obtain permission to play its Youth games at the ground and then to work with Council through the submission of a Development Application (DA ) to install temporary fencing around the main ground, installation of new lights as well as the erection of a small grandstand. After much lobbying of councillors and countless meetings, Hurstville City Council gave the green light to the only club in the Council area which plays representative football at NSW level.
For this reason, the Hurstville City Minotaurs opened the ground in style with the cutting of a ribbon (black and white ofcourse) by Hurstville Councillor Vince Badalati prior to the kick off of the Under 13s match between Hurstville City Minotaurs and Balmain East Tigers.
It was a carnival atmosphere at the ground with a huge crowd in attendance along with distinguished guests including, Clr Vince Battalatti, FNSW Competitions Manager Luke Cevolani, former Socceroo, Sydney Olympic and Olympiakos legend Chris Kalantzis, former Olympiakos and PAOK Australian born Greek international Goalkeeper Kyriakos Tohouroglou. There were small sided games, black & white balloons, food and drinks aplenty including a sizzling BBQ as well as the famous Lamb on the Souvla (Spit).
As the General mentioned in his speech prior to the cutting of the ribbon, there is still some work to do to continue to develop the ground into a great facility. It is a club which has had many great names wear the famous black and white stripes. Players which have played at NSL and International level including the likes of Mark Babic, Vince Colagiuri, Louie Dounis, Robbie Ironside, George Kalogeras, Kresimir Marusic, Terry Palapanis, Peter Papoythis, Angelo Petratos, Dimitri Petratos, Tom Pontidas, Peter Tsekenis and George Zabetakis. The Minotaurs is a club which deserves to have a rightful home of its own and now with the approval from the Council and FNSW, it has taken a giant step in securing the long term future of this iconic club.
