The Gold Coast Football Club has marked its journey to AFL in 2011 with the launch of a new marketing campaign and membership target.

With just over one year to go until the team joins the AFL competition Gold Coast Football Club Chairman John Witheriff and Senior Coach Guy McKenna started the clock and the countdown to the 2011 season.

The public launch was held at Surfers Paradise and was kicked off with the young GCFC players training in small groups before the assembled crowd.

Coinciding with the countdown was a visual presentation of the club’s brief history and the launch of a new campaign calling on the club’s supporters and the Gold Coast community to “Rise Up” and join the march to 2011.

Gold Coast Football Club Chairman John Witheriff said the Club has come a long way in its short history but to be a successful AFL football club the journey had just commenced.

“This is an important day for the club and for the Gold Coast – today we not only mark one year out from the AFL but we establish ourselves as a new national sporting team for the Gold Coast,” he said.

“When the GC17 bid for the 17th AFL licence was launched in April 2008 there were many who said it couldn’t be done. However the Gold Coast rose up to the challenge and 42,000 supporters backed our bid for our own AFL team. Now we have the pleasure of introducing the Gold Coast Football Club and celebrating the march to the 2011 AFL season.

“The year ahead will be the most challenging and most important year in the creation of the Club. We need supporters and we need members to be successful and we are again asking the Gold Coast to “Rise Up” to the challenge.

“To be the best we can we need 10,000 members to join us by July and help us continue the journey.

“During the bid we were set the task of establishing viability for a football team on the Coast. We now have a new stadium under construction, more than 20 full-time staff and an extremely talented list of young footballers. We are confident we can again meet the challenge.”

Joining the GCFC as an Inaugural Member this season secures priority access to the best seats in the new Carrara Stadium for 2011 plus free entry into the NAB Challenge match between the Brisbane Lions and Hawthorn on March 12th, and all GCFC VFL home games in 2010.

For more details on Gold Coast Football Club inaugural memberships, click here.