Club rallies to make Cooper smile again
Footballing communities can be an incredible thing, as the Warragul Football Club displayed when they came together last week to embrace and support one of the club’s favourite sons.
Cooper Alger, one of the seniors team’s top performers, recently sustained a serious eye injury at work just weeks into the Gulls’ 2022 campaign.
With the club having already organised a sportsman night, figures within the club had the idea to transform it into a memorabilia auction and raffle in an an effort to raise funds to support Cooper in his journey to recovery.
The turnaround was short, as the club had just four days to organise what ended up being a wonderful event that showed the true strength of the local community.
Popular football podcasters Dylan Buckley and Daniel Gorringe attended the night and have shown their own support for Cooper, meeting him personally and mentioning him in their List Cloggers
podcast.
Club officials called the night a massive success, especially as it came straight after Warragul claimed their first win of the season in a hard-fought contest against Traralgon.
Warragul senior coach and Cooper’s father Dean Alger said the support from the local community had been “huge.”
“You can see the number of people we had at the game and donations that have been coming in,” he said.
“Although footy clubs battle against each other on the ground, when things like this happen they certainly unite and the football community’s a fabulous place.”
A spokesman from the club said the extra efforts of Buckley and Gorringe especially were “sensational.”
“They came down and met Cooper before the night and they just took him under their wing, they didn’t have to do that,” they said.
“The whole thing just gave him a smile, and it was just great to see him smiling again.”