Harrow-Balmoral president Rosemary Langley said the club was in the process of drawing up plans for a new clubroom at the Balmoral ground. 

“It will be a whole new complex,” she said.

“The current little clubrooms and changerooms will be demolished. We will have new changerooms and it will be a multi-purpose facility for the district. It will be a great asset to the community.”

Ms Langley said the club had been working on the project for a few years. She hopes there will be significant progress in the next 12 months.

“That’s been in the plans now for a few years and we are waiting for the final bit of the puzzle to go through,” she said.

“We are hoping the final bit of funding comes through for that in the next six months and that this time next year we will be well on our way in doing that new project.”

The Swifts are also going through the planning stage for a new clubroom.

A $100,000 state government grant has been approved for the project at North Park. 

Swifts vice-president Ian O’Donnell said the multi-purpose clubroom would be a positive addition to the wider Stawell community as well as to the football and netball club.  

“The new facilities won’t just be for our netballers but also for all the athletics and other events that are held at North Park,” he said.

Upgrading netball amenities is a focus for many clubs.

Pimpinio president Danny Hamerston said his club was looking at adding a second netball court. 

“During the depths of winter it’s really hard to get quality court time for eight teams on one court,” he said.

“We can deal with it on match day, but training is tough for us.”

Jeparit-Rainbow president Jason Hutson would also like to see a second netball court at the Jeparit grounds. 

“At Jeparit we only have one playable netball court. It would be good to have two but we don’t have a lot of room at the moment,” he said.

Taylors Lake president Tammy McDonald said her club also had a need for another netball court. 

“Eventually we would love to have two legal netball courts rather than just the one, and for our netball changerooms to be updated,” she said.

“At the moment we don’t have the facilities for both home and away teams and the umpires.”

Kalkee president Trevor McRae said the club was in the process of adding new netball courts.

“We are building two new tennis courts with netball courts integrated into those, so we will have four courts and two netball courts all under lights,” he said.

Mr McRae said club facilities were vital in ensuring quality athletes came to play in the Wimmera. 

“Everyone is realising facilities are one of the most important things to attract footballers and netballers, so most clubs are trying hard to upgrade theirs,” he said. 

Another big wish for many clubs is to improve lighting at their grounds. 

Mr Hutson said he would like to see grounds at both Jeparit and Rainbow with better lighting in the near future.

“At both grounds we want to improve lighting on the football ovals,” he said.

“We have lighting on one side of each ground. We are looking at getting an extra two towers at each ground to help with the lighting.”

Rupanyup president Rod Weidemann said his club’s ground also needed lighting work.

“We are lucky enough to have pretty good facilities in terms of our clubrooms, but our lighting could do with a bit of an upgrade. It would be a whole new project with new towers,” he said.

“We want to improve our lighting for our footballers but also for our netball courts.”

The Southern Mallee Giants are also in the process of improving their lighting, after receiving a federal government grant for the project.