THE father of the late Pat Cronin is encouraging all players in the Bendigo Football Netball League to shake hands with each other pre-game on Saturday as a sign of respect for each other before going into battle.
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The BFNL will this weekend be one of five leagues across Victoria participating in the annual Pat Cronin Foundation Round.
The aim of the Pat Cronin Foundation Round - an initiative the BFNL has been involved with since 2022 - is to help prevent violence in social settings via education and awareness and end the coward punch.
The foundation was established following the 2016 death of 19-year-old Pat Cronin, who was killed after being punched in the head outside the Windy Mile Hotel in Diamond Creek.
Earlier that day - April 16 - Pat and his brother Lucas had played senior football together for the first time for Lower Plenty in the Northern league.
"It's fantastic to again have the support of the BFNL for the Pat Cronin Foundation Round," Pat's father, Matt, said on Friday.
"The Pat Cronin Foundation is a violence prevention charity that was formed eight years ago when our son Pat was killed by a coward punch.
"What we're about is trying to put an end to that and how we do that is through education, community support and changing community attitudes to the problem of violence.
"We've seen the recent publicity around the deaths of women at the hands of males and it's just horrific and shouldn't happen, but violence at any level shouldn't happen.
"We've got five leagues involved with the Pat Cronin Foundation Round this weekend and 50,000 players and then when you add to that maybe 100,000 spectators across all the games of football and netball, it's a huge movement.
"All players will wear yellow armbands and we will have coaches, presidents and clubs talking about the issue of needing to stop violence... the more we talk about it, the greater chance we have of changing society.
"We've just got to change people's thoughts. We've been into a lot of schools in Bendigo, regional Victoria and metropolitan Melbourne and last year presented in every state and territory going national for the first time and will be repeating that again this year."
All BFNL games on Saturday will feature Pat Cronin Foundation posters around the venues that will include a QR Code that will allow for donations to be made to the foundation.
"Every $10 we raise helps us to educate another young person," Matt said.
"We get limited funding, so we rely heavily on our communities for support.
"With the 50,000 players and 100,000 spectators involved this weekend, that's the equivalent of one-and-a-half MCGs and it's really humbling for us as a family that there will be this number of people thinking about Pat this weekend.
"It's eight years since Pat went out for a quiet Saturday night and never came home. It breaks our heart every day, but to think he is remembered this way for good rather than bad is where we are optimistic about the future and the community saying it will shun violence at every opportunity.
"One of the gestures as part of the round this weekend is we're asking players to shake hands before the game as well as after it.
"Shaking your opponent's hand before the game is a real show of respect and we figure that if you look in the eye of your opponent and shake their hand then you are probably going to be less likely to do something really stupid on the field. We feel it's a positive symbolic gesture."
