NEW Football Wagga president Paul Galloway is excited by the challenge that lies in front of him as he prepares to lead the sport out of COVID.
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Galloway was elected as the new president of Football Wagga at the annual general meeting on Wednesday night, replacing Tony Dobbin after five years in the role.
While Galloway has not held a position on the board previously, he is no stranger to Football Wagga, having played and coached at various levels over the years.
A player and junior coach at Lake Albert, Galloway spent 10 years coaching junior teams at Wagga United. He has also coached at Football Wagga's academy level.
Galloway, who works for The Galloway Group in property development and managing rural investments, is looking forward to getting stuck in.
"To be honest, I'm excited about it. I don't think you put your hand up for these jobs without a fair bit of thought, because they are big jobs," Galloway said.
"You've got to go into them with a bit of passion and a bit of interest so I've certainly got that and that's why I did it.
"It's a big job and I'm up for that challenge."
While Galloway has been strongly involved with soccer, he hails from a rugby background.
He was a first grade and club coach at Wagga City, where he also served on the committee, and is also a former president of Mount Austin Cricket Club.
Galloway has coached at high levels in rugby union and also worked as a sports development officer at the Department of Sport and Recreation and Riverina Academy of Sport.
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He believes his extensive background in sport can only help him in his new position at Football Wagga.
"I think so. I suppose when you've worked at a club level within an existing competition it gives you ideas and thoughts on how things should be run and I don't think those are limited to one particular code," he said.
"I think what it does is give you a broader prospective on sport in general so I think it will help me.
"I've coached at a higher level, a state talented athletes program in rugby and when you've had that relationship with the state bodies and all that sort of thing, it gives you a concept on advancement through a competition and I think that's important as well.
"Working with Sport and Rec and Academy of Sport, you're working with elite athletes but you're also working with different sporting bodies. It just gives you that experience of working with paid people within organisations and also volunteers and I think that's really important that you've got a concept of both roles.
"Obviously Football Wagga has a lot of volunteers within their structure and you need to be conscious of those and be supportive of them and I think that's a really important aspect of this role."
Galloway enters the role with a wide range of goals. He wants to maintain and strengthen relations with clubs, as well as focus on player and coaching development and support for volunteers.
He also strongly believes in looking to the future and revisiting Football Wagga's strategic plan.
"The strategic plan looks like it ended in 2019 and when you think about what's happened in the last two years, 2020 and 2021, it's probably been hard to have a focus other than just survive," he said.
"I think most sports have been operating in a survival mode through COVID, just trying to get people through all the different hurdles that's been placed upon them.
"So I think fingers crossed coming in 2022, we can really invest some time to the strategic plan and look forward for the sport and try to get some ideas and goals on what we want to happen and where we want it to go."
Also at Wednesday night's meeting, Donna O'Grady, Rachael Barrell and David Merlino were re-elected to their positions of secretary, treasurer and operations. The media and strategy and planning positions remain vacant.
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