With over 2000 active players, the Winston Hills Bears have been continually looking for opportunities to provide the best facilities and training for their players whilst sustaining and growing their strong community and family ties
Winston Hills are split right across both the Hills and Parramatta councils, with Max Ruddock Reserve operating as the club’s home ground whilst Gooden Reserve, Arthur Phillip Park and McCoy Park assisting to field one of their countless teams over the weekend.
However, their newest ground, which they acquired this season, has allowed the club to start and grow new and existing programs that have further strengthened the club and provided players with opportunities that have previously been unavailable due to ground restrictions.
“We also have a relationship with Hill Sports High in Seven Hills with the synthetic field there,” Winston Hills secretary Belinda Waddington said.
“We’ve acquired that this season as a full-time field pretty much for us, which has been really good for being able to move some training across there and have some consistency with training and games.
“It’s definitely allowed us to have some more games there on a couple of the weekends where the majority of things got washed out. We’ve done a lot of, like, a junior development program in the off-season and our female football program in the off-season. So, we’ve really pushed that to try and build up our juniors, which we’ve been able to do with access to that field.
“Previously, we haven’t been able to get access through council fields to be able to run those sorts of programs. We’ve done that this season and it’s proven to really help our junior teams that are coming through, which is great.”
Nearing the end of the 2026 season, the Bears are excited about what lies ahead in 2027. The clubhouse at Max Ruddock Reserve has been undergoing a major reconstruction, with the new facilities hosting a big new canteen, change rooms and referee rooms. The most exciting thing that the club is looking forward to is the prospect of bringing more of their teams back home to Max Ruddock, in a push for greater club cohesion and culture.
“I think we’re 18 months plus, 20 months into the process now. It does sort of look like it’s in its final steps,” Waddington said.
“Next year we’re really hoping that it’s open and we’re back in, and our Men’s Premier League team can come back and have home games at Max and really do a whole circle sort of approach.
“We want to give back to the community. We want the community to be a part of football, and we want everyone to feel like a family.
“That’s where we’re all sort of coming from, and we want to make sure that anyone can feel like they can be involved in any capacity, whether it’s, you know, the youngest players to the oldest players to coaches and managers and being on the committee or a volunteer.”
