The Victoria Park Raiders Junior Football Club has launched an online petition that’s gained more than 1300 signatures to save Higgins Park as their home ground.

The Town of Victoria Park is undertaking a masterplan of future development which could see the Vic Park Raiders relocating, and hockey clubs taking over the venue. 

Vic Park Raiders club president Wayne Tinlin says the club has nowhere else to go. 

“If they decide that after all that’s said and done that they’ll find us another place, and we agree to that and the hockey club takes over, that’s a win-win for the football club,” Mr Tinlin says.  

“It’s just that at the moment its dire straights because we don’t have an alternative and frankly, I don’t believe there is one.

“The need for a petition was very apparent because the support that we gain from people who have been involved with the Raiders for a long period of time, they need to know what the stakes are.”

Steve Hancock, whose parents were on the team’s founding committee in 1953, says he was ‘disgusted’ at the proposal. 

“I was very disappointed and so I was fully supportive of what the president put down,” Mr Hancock says. 

Despite the Raiders’ issue with the future of Higgins Park, the club feels very positive about the masterplan.  

“It could allow us to have new facilities, look at a centre for mental health and wellbeing, and that would also not only be with sports programs but also with the elderly residents that live across the road,” Mr Tinlin says. 

“I just want to make sure that we’re not [seen as objecting] to anything the Town of Vic Park is doing and we’re just really glad for this opportunity.”  

You can see the Raiders’ petition here.