Lynne Mowbray | A local sports store has donated 238 pairs of football boots to school children in the Northern Territory [NT]. Owners of Kane’s Sport Store in Maclean and Yamba, Jacqui and Kane Aeschlimann said that they decided to donate their surplus outdated stock to the school children in the NT, after a conversation with one of Kane’s relatives who works for the Department of Education, NT Government. “I’d heard about the children up there playing AFL in bare feet,” Kane said. “So we packaged up 22 large boxes of football boots and sent them to Darwin. “We have to say a huge thanks to Lori and Mark McIntyre from Lormac Transport in Grafton who organised and paid for the freight of the boots to the NT. Mark being a legend in the rugby league community in the Clarence Valley showed a great interest in helping out. “The boxes left here in February but due to the floods inland, they took about seven weeks to finally arrive,” he said. The school communities which have so far received the donated footy boots were over the moon, by the generous gift. In a letter sent to Kane from one of the schools, it shows the impact the donation has made to these children. ‘Nightcliff Primary School would like to thank you for your generosity in donating 30 pairs of football boots to each of our boys and girls AFL Football teams. Our students and parents really appreciated it and all send a huge thank you to your store, “Kane’s Sports Store Yamba”.  You made our boys and girls really happy, for some of them it was the first pair of boots they’d ever owned, it was like an early Christmas for them. Our students wore their new boots in their respective AFL carnivals with fantastic results: NPS Power (Boys) placed 1st at Darwin Region Schools AFL Gala Day undefeated 2nd year in a row, “Back to Back Premiers”, and NPS Power (Girls) placed 3rd at AFLNT Pink Power Day with 4 wins and 1 loss. Many thanks again, Mr Aeschlimann and “Kane’s Sports Store Yamba”. Mathew Ryan NPS HPE Teacher & Sporting Schools Coordinator In an email received by The Independent from Tim Morgan, Principal of Karama School in Darwin, it said; ‘I would like to say, that through the increasable generosity of Kane’s Sports in donating an entire team set of football boots to our school we are now able to run onto the oval fully prepared for the game ahead.  As we are the 2017 raining interschool AFL comp champions we greatly appreciate this support to hopefully retain our title. Thank you for this greatly appreciated gift for our team. These boots will be well used throughout the year’. The remainder of the football boots are still being transported to other remote communities within the NT and will no doubt be gratefully received.