Culture and inclusivity the focus for Sweeney and Matthews

TORQUAY Surf Life Saving Club’s Julian Sweeney and Grant Matthews have been named president and club captain respectively following the club’s 77th annual general meeting.

Sweeney’s transition to club president follows four years of leadership from former president Tiffany Quinlan. Meanwhile, Matthews will assume Sweeney’s previous role as club captain.

“With Grant now club captain, we will look to add to the 12 months of hard work we have put in building what I like to call the ‘culture’ club,” Sweeney said.

“I believe Grant thinks in a similar way to me, we’re all about culture, nurturing and treating everyone as equals, we don’t care where you’re from or what your background is, we want to embrace anyone who wants to be a part of our club and anyone who wants to be a member.”

Matthews is looking forward to taking on his first committee role at Torquay SLSC after several coaching gigs, seeing it as an opportunity to pay the club back, and then some, for what it has given him over the past two decades.

“One of the themes that we will look to address is reaching out into the community more, that’s really important to us,” he said.

“We’ll also aim to continue to add to the level of inclusivity that our predecessors have been building over years.

“But overall, we’re in a really good space overall as a club as a result of peoples’ hard work through hard times and personally I’m excited to build upon that.”