“It all started with my four boys playing at the club,” he said.

“I’ve done a lot of different things over the years but its mostly time-keeping now and helping out on game day.

“I no longer have a day-to-day role with the club but I have stayed on as an active member.”

Despite growing up in nearby Murtoa McQueen’s connection to the club extends to when his grandfather was a committee member.

“I continued to support the club even then before I eventually settled down in Rupanyup later on,” he said.

His four sons Stephen, Anthony, Mark and Gavin all played at the club and that is when Robert started to become more actively involved.

Roles at the club included transporting players to games, working as a fundraiser, being a long-time committee member, being the time-keeper as well as generally helping out in any way he could.

In 1996 he was made a life member of the club.

While on-field success is always a goal at the start of each season McQueen said watching players enjoy themselves is the most pleasing thing for him.

“We struggled at the start of this season but to see the comradeship between the players build during the season was great,” he said.

“The enjoyment I get out of watching young people enjoy themselves on and off the field is massive.”

Rupanyup Football and Netball Club president Rodney Weidemann said volunteers like Robert were invaluable to the club.

“Robert’s just been a supporter of the club for such a long time,” he said.

“There is so many jobs to do each Saturday, so to have someone like Robert that we can rely on to do certain jobs makes things a lot easier.

“We can always find someone else to do the job if Robert is away but if we don’t have to we can focus on doing other things.”

Club secretary Kel Tyler said volunteers were the heart and sole of the club.

“The more people you have volunteering the less they each have to do,” he said.

“We have plenty of people doing plenty of jobs at Rupanyup and Robert is certainly one person we can rely on.”

Tyler said spreading the workload among many volunteers was crucial to a club thriving.

“I’ve been to seminars about volunteering and they told us that people might be reluctant to volunteer if they don’t see an end point for the role,” he said. “What they found is that if you give someone a role that is for a set period of time doing a set thing then they will more likely accept and then come back to ask if there is anything else they can do.”

McQueen said he thinks everyone in Rupanyup contributes to the club in some way or another.

“It’s something for the people in the community to do,” he said. “Without the football club there would be no town. If you go to any club in the district its would be the same thing. The clubs exist because of the hard work put in the by their volunteers. The clubs with bigger population bases don’t necessarily have people that commit in the same way because the perception is they can leave it to someone else to do.”