‘Like my men’s shed’: John O’Toole celebrates over 600 matches with Huon Valley Soccer Club

Tall, thin and white-haired, at 67 years old John O’Toole is still considered extremely difficult to get past on the soccer pitch.

The club veteran, who served as the Huon Valley Soccer Club’s inaugural president and is a driving force behind forming its senior men’s team in 1996, on Sunday reached a significant milestone, playing his 601st club match.

But with his laconic delivery, Mr O’Toole has a way of underplaying the achievement with the southern Tasmanian team.

“It is pretty special,” he said, but quickly adds a humble qualifier.

His understated manner extends to his influence on the club over the past 30 years.

Mr O’Toole is one of the oldest active players in southern Tasmanian community soccer, and while it has been a long time since he served as president, he remains busy as a volunteer or fill-in on the pitch whenever he is needed.

The unique achievement of over 600 games with the club puts Mr O’Toole second on its all-time game record list.

And while the Sunday game was originally slated to be his 600th, in typical fashion, the club stalwart answered the call to sub in for a game the week prior.

But Sunday marked another important milestone for the club veteran — a chance to play with three of his sons, Tobias, 43, Reuben, 32, and Solomon, 30, for the first time as the club’s defensive back line.

Family and soccer have been two inextricable factors in Mr O’Toole’s life since he was a kid.

Growing up in Sydney, Mr O’Toole was coached by his father and played the sport for much of his life.

He would, in turn, coach his own children — a clan of nine — after he moved to the Huon Valley.

The first iteration of the Huon Valley Soccer Club was set up by Andrew Longey in 1987, enlisting students from the nearby school to form a junior team to play against Kingborough and South Hobart.

Mr O’Toole wanted to get his sons involved in the sport, but when he first got to the club, the set-up was Spartan.

“And then we were able to afford a tent.

“We had no toilets or change rooms or anything there at the time.”

Mr O’Toole soon started coaching the juniors, and the following year became the president of the club and one of the driving forces behind the establishment of the first senior men’s team in 1996.

Since then, the club has only grown, with Huon Valley Soccer Club this season fielding its inaugural Southern League One side, and the men’s teams now competing in every division of southern Tasmania’s social competition.

Ken Reddy, 48, is the current club president and has been with Huon Valley Soccer Club since he was a teenager.

He said Mr O’Toole had left an indelible mark on the club’s culture.

“He’s a wizard. That’s what he’s always been called,” Mr Reddy said.

‘It’s a bit like my men’s shed’

Despite the club’s growth, the journey so far to build it up from scratch has been a labour of love.

Because the club is volunteer-run, keeping it viable and competitive requires dedicated members, and club infrastructure is not cheap.

Mr Reddy said Mr O’Toole, a self-employed builder, had spent thousands of dollars in time and effort building clubrooms at an old site, and still undertakes any repairs that need to be done at the current club.

The senior O’Toole even marks the lines at all of the club’s pitches himself with the help of his sons, often using paint he purchased himself, Mr Reddy said.

While the club has been chasing sponsors to help pay for better lights, securing money has not been easy.

It seems it is a perennial issue for the club — an article from the Huon News reporting on the men’s team’s debut season in 1996 noted the new lights were an issue for the new team.

Thirty years on, the words captured in that paper continue to ring true:

“The team will play on and try and justify the assistance they have received by playing good soccer in a positive spirit.”

“We have people go around us for sponsorship and they all just say, ‘Oh, we’ve got the footy and the cricket,'” Mr O’Toole said.

Mr O’Toole thinks he has only got a few more seasons with the club left in him, and if he made it to 70 as a player, he would happily bow out.

But playing on the field, or working behind the scenes, the club remains an important lifeline for him and others in the tight-knit community.

“With a big family, I don’t go out much, but soccer and training days are my time to get out there and have a laugh with the other guys.”