Country Week is one of the most popular events on the local football calendar. The 2025 edition kicks off this week at Kingsway Sporting Complex where in excess of 1,300 footballers representing close to 100 teams from across Western Australia will converge in a week-long celebration of regional football.
It will be a far cry from the first Country Week of 50 years ago when four Under-10 teams met in a round-robin format in Inglewood. That inaugural tournament only got legs only due to the sheer determination of two men – Frank Kettell and Frank Holcroft – who set about bringing together and recognising the state’s junior regional footballers.
“To think Country Week is still going fifty years later and there are now over 1,000 kids involved is brilliant,” said Frank Kettell, who served on the Junior Soccer Association of WA committee for fourteen years from 1973. “There was a lot of work that went into the first Country Week, there were no mobile phones or internet back then but somehow we managed to get it all to come together.”
The earliest records of organised junior football in West Australia reach back to 1900 when a five-team, school-based league was won by High School. The following year saw the formation of the Junior British Football Association of WA, who administered the game through to 1965 when the then recently formed Soccer Federation of WA took control of the leagues.
“The juniors were a branch of the Federation,” explained Frank, who coached juniors at the fast-growing Morley club from the early 1970s and was also the clubs’ junior delegate to the Federation. “The delegates has some firm views and decided we should have our own association to look after the juniors properly.”
“We used to need permission from the Federation to do anything and that got up our nose, we felt we should have been looking after ourselves but we would still be affiliated with the Federation.” The inaugural meeting of the newly formed junior Association took place on January 10, 1972, when the junior club delegates elected an eleven-person board presided over by John Bazen.
The slow growth junior football had experienced during the preceding decade suddenly accelerated. By the time the 1972 season kicked off some forty-four clubs had entered a combined total of 189 teams across 22 leagues, ranging from Under-8s to Under-17s. In excess of 1,600 games were played that winter with player registrations tallying 4,038.
The following year the Association selected Under-10 and Under-11 representative teams which travelled close to 1,200 kilometres to play in the Pilbara town of Mount Newman, where a junior club had recently been formed. Further afield, Western Australia started to make its mark on the National Championships by competing in all five age groups, Under-12s upwards.
That momentum carried over into 1974. The State Under-16s lost narrowly to England Under-15s in a schoolboys international played at a rain-drenched Velodrome in July. An eight-school junior carnival took place on Belmont Oval in August and, two months later, West Australia claimed their first National title when the Under-13s won their tournament on home soil.
It was on the back of those successes that Country Week came about. “The Association board had been discussing ways to promote junior football outside of metropolitan Perth,” recalled Frank, who now occupied the role of Secretary. “We knew they were playing in Newman and down in Bunbury and Albany and we thought there might be other areas too, so I suggested we contact the different country areas and find out.”
“But there wasn’t a lot of interest from the others. The juniors were growing quickly and the board considered they already had enough work to do. Thankfully, Frank Holcroft, who was the Treasurer, offered to give me a hand. Frank deserves as much credit for Country Week as me, if it hadn’t been for him then it might not have got off the ground.”
“Frank and me made contact with a lot of people in the country and it turned out there was junior football being played all over the State. So we started to think about how we could bring them all together. The Under-13s National Championship had been played in Perth the year before, the board agreed that had worked well and that we could do something similar for the players in the country.”
The call was put out for country associations to nominate teams for a junior carnival to be held in Perth in early September. “We let the metropolitan clubs know that country teams were coming to Perth, we gave them the dates and asked that any club wanting to billet a team should let us know,” said Frank. “We had no problem finding places for players to stay as a lot of clubs came forward.”
“At the time, Inglewood Kiev and Cracovia were both playing at Walter Road Reserve, where they had three pitches. We approached (Kiev president) Herman Kramer and Eddie Czekalowski (from Cracovia) and they were keen to host the carnival. After we’d worked out the details we made it official by sending them a letter.”
“The Referees Association came to the party, they provided cadet referees to officiate all the games, and at the end of each day we put on coaching sessions for the coaches and team managers. There was also a mid-week dinner at the Pagoda Ballroom so team officials and families who’d come to Perth could socialise and get to know each other. It all went like clockwork.”
“At the first Country Week we had four Under-10 teams – Northam and Wongan Hills (aka Central Districts), Goldfields, Newman and Albany. Running side-by-side with that was the Metropolitan Championship, the metropolitan area was split into four districts – Eastern, Central, Southern and Northern. Then at the end of the week the winner of each competition played off for the State Championship.”
Newman clinched the inaugural Country Week trophy by defeating Albany 1-0 in an exciting final, the deciding goal coming from the penalty spot. Northern Districts took out the Metropolitan title after outscoring their rivals from the Eastern Districts. Not surprisingly, Northern Districts were also the State Champions.
1975 would prove to be real a watershed moment for junior football in the west, highlighted by National Championship wins by the State Under-12, Under-13 and Under-14 teams. And the runaway success of Country Week set the framework for a junior tournament which grew quickly and, five decades on, continues to attract and inspire footballers from regional West Australia.
“After the first year, we could see there was interest from other parts of the state,” Frank said. “Harry Croft, who was the JSA president, and me flew to Port Hedland and we also made our way to Geraldton to see if they wanted to play. For the second Country Week we had Hedland, Geraldton, Collie and Merredin come in to make it an eight-team competition, and we also added an Under-11 age group.”
“It kept on growing and within a few years we had Bunbury, Karratha, Paraburdoo and Tom Price playing too. The focus was always on bringing juniors together from across the state to enjoy their football, but on the side of that there were some good memories created and some great friendships made between the coaches and families who were part of Country Week. They were great times.”
