The History of the Montrose D-Men Coterie
The Montrose D-Men Coterie Club was formed in 1995.
The inaugural meeting held at the De Montrose Chinese restaurant on 6th March 1995. The first meeting included a total of 25 members, all from the Montrose community, with the majority being from the Montrose Football and Cricket Clubs. The first president was John Harrop, with Roger Skien as Treasurer.
In 2015 the Coterie Club is still going strong, with 20 members, including two original members, being Graham Sprague and Greg Gardoll.
The whole idea in forming the Coterie Club was to support community sports in various different ways. Over the years this has been achieved by helping improve renovations to the old pavilion club rooms, supplying practice nets to the cricket club, fundraising for the new scoreboard, shelters and various other initiatives. Since its inception, the Coterie Club have also assisted in membership payments and playing equipment for junior players to assist families with the expense where needed. In all, over the first 12 years the Coterie Club donated approximately $12,000 per year to the sporting community, which tally’s to approximately $150,000 today.
In the last eight years the Coterie Club concentrated on helping raise a small part of the deposit for the new Ken Dowling Pavilion, in which they contributed approximately $52,000 to the grounds committee. With the building of the Ken Dowling Pavilion achieved, the Coterie Club’s focus is back on assisting the sporting community in general.
Over the years the Coterie Club’s Presidents have been: John Harrop, Greg Gardoll, Barry Williams, Bruce Stephens, Doug Miller, Steve Wright, Damien Gray, and Troy Mansell, Matt Jones with the current President being Aaron Roche. Many of these men have been President for multiple years.
The main fundraisers for The Coterie Club are the Crime Night usually held in July and the Annual Golf Day in March which started in 2016. Everyone in the community is always welcome to come along. Main beneficiaries in recent years being Football, Cricket, Netball, Auskick, FIDA Clinic, Montrose Recreation Reserve Infrastructure.
The Coteries Club’s main aim is to help all facets of sport in the Montrose community and hopefully we will continue to do so for many more years to come.
The Coterie Club (Montrose Coterie Group Inc.) meet the first Wednesday of the month at the Ken Dowling Pavilion at 7.00pm.
New members are always welcome.
For any information please contact the current Secretary David Harbison on 0490 046 880.