Growing maize crop for maze helps with extra cash for Woodville football

About to be a-maize-d Mason Reid with Angus, Jodie and William Forsyth. at Woodville's Amazing Maze.

When your sport grows, everything grows – player numbers, the need for coaches and managers, the demand for pitches and with it lighting, pitch marking, goals and other gear, parent volunteers, cost of compliance and rates – biggest of all transport costs.

Richard Reid knows it all as he has worked hard to reinvigorate football in Woodville.

With a reasonable junior football base catering from 4 to 16, a couple of years ago a men’s third division team was formed and it thrived and continues to do so.

This year with 20 registered players a women’s senior team has formed. It played on Sunday in the Kirsty Dingle Cup at Palmerston North.

Richard expects by the time everyone is registered there will be 140 Woodville players on the books.

The Waireka Trust has helped by agreeing to sponsor the gear for the women’s team and the club received a boost following the Women’s World Cup last year when it applied to Football New Zealand for equipment used by the victorious Spanish team.

It received a large supply of gear used including four sets of pop-up goals, training cones, hurdles, chilly bins, a whiteboard, ball pump and pressure gauge.

More funding is needed however and the club received permission from the TDC to grow maize in its field next to the sports ground.

While the sale of the maize for silage is the major economic return, setting up A Maze in Maize was another initiative which worked a treat last Saturday with a steady flow of locals through from 11am until 5pm.

Survivors of the Woodville maze Paige Bolton, Tim Bolton and Joseph Henderson.

It was then converted into a night maze under the title “A Maizemare on Grant Street“ with appropriate spooky additions. It was again very successful and the club raised nearly $1500 from the 300 participants over the whole day.

The community has been hugely supportive with the maize crop prepared and sown by local volunteers and Corson Maize donation the seed.

It is a win-win for everyone Richard says because sporting opportunities are limited in Woodville due to travel costs as teams have to travel to Dannevirke, Palmerston North and even Levin and Whanganui.

Dave Murdoch is a part-time photo-journalist based in Dannevirke. For the last 10 years he has covered any community story telling good news about the district.