The Kaiviti Silktails Rugby League Football Club will pay tribute to its most loved staff member Jacquie Shannon, when we take on the Ryde-Eastwood Hawks in Round 16 of the NSWRL Ron Massey Cup at Churchill Park, Lautoka, as they play for the Inaugural Jacquie Shannon Memorial Bowl.
Jacquie Shannon was the teams inaugural Football Manager appointed in the pre-season of 2019, and later was promoted to club General Manager. Jacquie was the backbone of the club, playing an integral part in the establishment of the Kaiviti Silktails RLFC from its inception in 2020 to its current form today.
During the club’s two-year re-location between 2021 and 2022 to Australia during the COVID-19 pandemic, Jacquie was absent from the Silktails Captains Run at the clubs training base at Eastern Suburbs PCYC in Daceyville on June 18 last year. She was later found that morning unresponsive by the teams coaching staff in her Kingsford Unit.
With the team due to play a scheduled NSWRL Ron Massey Cup match the following day against the Mounties, the players and staff voted unanimously to play on in her honour where they narrowly lost the match on the field but were applauded by those in attendance for the team’s bravery. The team then missed the finals by a narrow point last season.
In 2023, the club will play the Inaugural Jacquie Shannon Memorial Bowl where all proceeds will go the clubs newly formed community initiative – The Kaiviti Silktails Community Youth Program, where Jacquie’s silhouette is in the logo design.
As part of what is a Fijian rugby league first, the Kaiviti Silktails RLFC joined forces with the NRL’s VET Pathways team and Australian-based employment, training, and community services provider VERTO, to launch a vocational Certificate IV Youth Work program with 30 Silktails squad members.
The program, funded through Training Services NSW and delivered by VERTO, got underway in mid-May at the Silktails’ Lautoka headquarters in Fiji, and will also be delivered to players while based in Australia during the NSW Rugby League’s Ron Massey Cup season.
As a result of this training, the Kaiviti Silktails Community Youth Program will be launched in honour of our late Football Manager Jacquie Shannon and inspired by the Club’s long-standing partnership with PCYC NSW where our Sydney Training Base is. Our players will work for this program in 2023 delivering 20-30 hours a week of youth work to balance that out with their training commitments.
The players will wear a commemorative strip featuring the club’s logo and all jersey’s will be auctioned online with all monies raised including proceeds from the match to go to the clubs Community Youth Program.
The Inaugural Jacquie Shannon Memorial Bowl will take place on Saturday 15/07/2023, at Churchill Park, Lautoka, with kick-off at 12pm FJT. The club will be led out by 20-year-old and Fiji Secondary Schools back rower Fenton Williams, who is the nephew of the lady we all know as Aunty Jacquie.
