50 consecutive years for football mad Stephen Milroy

Some players struggle to string together five consecutive years of playing football.

Others might manage 10, 15 or maybe even 20 consecutive years of playing football.

But very, very few manage to play for 50 consecutive years and even less do so for just one clubs.

Stephen Milroy has done just that, however, with this season marking his 50th-straight year of playing with East Bankstown FC in the Bankstown District Soccer Association.

Milroy signed up to play with his brother Peter in 1967 and has not looked back since, taking on a number of roles within the club over the five-decade period.

"We were only little," Milroy told Football New South Wales.

"It is a family-oriented club, the sort of place where you have a good climate for kids and for football."

Milroy still plays in the club’s All Age team, despite starting to feel the effects of a knee reconstruction from 25 years ago.

"It’s starting to give me a bit of trouble," Milroy said.

"But you want to stay on the park. I just do a lot of swimming, some light weights to make sure I can still get out there."

Milroy says he owes plenty of fantastic memories to his one and only club, but said the most pivotal moment at the club was being coached by then New South Walers Coaching Federation State Coaching Director and Secretary Eric Arneil in his younger years.

"I think having an opportunity to be coached by Eric at that stage of my life was very important," he said. 

"He gave me opportunities to play and in the context of my coaching he was an important influence."

That influence would inspire Milroy to provide plenty of his own to the club, when in 1991 he developed the club’s junior coaching policy in response to research into children’s sport and became the club’s first director of coaching in the same year.

"That was the year I did my cruciate, so I couldn’t play," he said.

"Being in the education game, there was some great research coming out of the Australian Sports Commission, so we put it together based on that.

"Then I became the coaching director to, I suppose, drive the policy."

Milroy has since let go of his coaching duties to focus on his role as Principal of Caroline Chisolm Special School at Padstow, where he oversees the education of 106 children with varying disabilities.

Thankfully, he still has time to play and help out around the club where he can.

"The young blokes here are still learning and I find it really rewarding trying to help them through," he said.

"I started playing here with my brother and now I’m playing with my son and my nephew.

"It’s been a bit of a journey, but it’s been a very rewarding one." 

-By Matthew Galea