ROCHESTER, KYNETON HEAD LADDER: END OF 1960 SEASON

ROCHESTER and Kyneton were the top two clubs at the end of the 1960 home-and-away season with Sandhurst and Castlemaine rounding out the top four.

In mid-August and with three rounds still to be played 50 years ago the Tigers headed the table on percentage from the Demons.

But Rochester won all of their concluding three matches — to Kyneton’s two –– to snatch top spot by one clear game. Read the rest of this entry »

by Richard Jones

NOW that the 2010 BFL Hall of Fame and Team of the Decade concepts are up and running, it’s perhaps timely to look back at an All Stars function held 13 years ago.

In October, 1997, the VFL-aligned Bendigo Diggers Football Club hosted an evening in which 23 top players from Bendigo’s VCFL region for 1972-1997 were honoured.

Former St Kilda coach Ken Sheldon was installed as playing coach during the course of the dinner. Dual Brownlow Medallist Greg ‘Diesel’ Williams was named as the centreman and captain.

No fewer than 18 of the 23 named had Carlton connections. Not surprising I suppose when it’s remembered that Bendigo, and its VCFL zone, was the Blues’ conduit for decades.

Sheldon hailed originally from Mitiamo and All Stars half-forward/rover Jimmy Buckley was a Kyneton boy.

Frank Coghlan had Bridgewater roots, despite his affiliation with BFL club Sandhurst. Wingman Peter Francis had Heathcote ties.

And ruckman Warren ‘Wow’ Jones played for Castlemaine before heading to Melbourne to further his career.

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THE final team makes interesting reading with quite a few selections still to hang up the boots on their AFL careers.

Carlton defenders Peter Dean and Michael Sexton were still playing while Leigh Colbert was to switch from Geelong to North Melbourne where he racked up another 104 games.

Interchange man Peter Rohde had moved from Princes Park to the MCG to continue his career with Melbourne. His coaching career with Norwood in the SANFL and the Western Bulldogs in the AFL (from 2002-2004) was still to come.

Rohde is now football operations manager at Port Adelaide. Read the rest of this entry »

IN the mud and slush of mid-winter 1960 Echuca and Castlemaine scored surprise victories over fancied opponents Golden Square and Sandhurst.

The Advertiser’s chief football writer John Rice described the July 11th round 50 years ago as contested “on muddy battle grounds”.

“Tailenders Echuca downed the Square, which was fighting for a place in the four, although this was expected in some circles.

“Top club Sandhurst were beaten by Castlemaine, South Bendigo snatched a four-point victory over Rochester while Kyneton comfortably beat Eaglehawk,” Rice wrote on Monday, July 11, 1960.

“However what surprised me most was that not one player was drowned on the water-logged grounds,” the Addy scribe added. Read the rest of this entry »

TWENTY years on, South Bendigo’s three premiership-winning teams from 1990 will celebrate their QEO successes on Saturday, June 26^th.

The Peter Bradbury-coached seniors downed Golden Square by 22 points in a classic grand final, Brendan Francis’ reserves accounted for Eaglehawk by 27 points, while in the under-18s the Brian Teasdale-mentored Bloods beat the Square by 15 points.

South ended a 16-year senior flag drought in the 1990 XXXX BFL grand final with captain Peter Tyack, a current day selector, the prime mover for his club.

Tyack had started to find touch in the Bloods’ Round 17 clash at Canterbury Park against Eaglehawk. He finished the grand final full of running and won not only the Sportsmen’s Association Kevin Curran Memorial Trophy, but also the VCFL medal and the league sponsor’s XXXX award.

The Bloods’ skipper kicked one of the goals-of-the-day from the city end’s Camp Hill school pocket.

Apart from Tyack, South also had great contributors in free-running half-back Shaun Leech, on-baller David Griffin and rebounding defender Brian “Puss” Kendall.

For the Square there was none better than eventual Nalder Medallist Dean Strauch. His strength in the packs was pivotal to the Bulldogs and he was well backed up by ruckman Alan Patterson, wingman Wayne Campbell and centre half-forward Phil McEvoy.

It was a fiery, but not unexpected opening after the first bounce. Square centre half-back Darren Kulbars ironed out South key forward Steve Allender. Kulbars’ name immediately went into the book.

From another incident involving the same two players only moments later, South forward Peter Hinck came in to remonstrate with Kulbars and found his name also pencilled into the book.

That wasn’t the end of the onfield fireworks. In the third quarter Square rover Darren Harris (now working his way up through the AFL coaching ranks) was charged by central umpire Alan ‘Boofa’ Smith for allegedly striking South’s Brian Kendall.

And in the final term, McEvoy charged in and tangled with South follower Steven Hoiles after Hoiles had caught Justin Esposito high in an attempted tackle.

The Bloods bounced out to a three-goal lead in the first nine minutes although by the 22-minute mark of the opening quarter the Dogs had reduced the leeway to two points.

And then by quarter-time Golden Square had grabbed the lead by four points –- 5.0 to 4.2 – and the stage was set for a gripping struggle over the next three quarters.

There were some interesting match-ups early on. Tony Jones was on South’s Mark Keck on one wing, Robert Bakes started in a back pocket on surprise Square on-field selection Luke Daffey, while 2010 club president Malcolm Balnaves started at full-back on Square’s Russell Parkes.

Kendall picked up McEvoy with the Dogs opting for Kieran Byrne as Bradbury’s tagger. Unfortunately for the Square Byrne was forced to sit out the rest of the game from early in the second term with a broken bone in one forearm.

No matter how far the Bloods stretched the lead the Square always seemed able to mount a challenge. South added 5.6 to Square’s 3.5 in the second term.

The Bloods seemed to be in control of the first part of the quarters, then the Bulldogs surged as the clock ticked down to the time-on period.

By three quarter-time and even though South had built up a 33-point lead by adding 4.8 to 1.2, the Bulldogs weren’t finished. Golden Square kept fighting back despite the Bloods peppering the Barnard Street end goals in the final stanza.

Bradbury had told his charges at the lemon-time break they had to consider the scores level with 30 minutes remaining to be played.

South’s David McMurray grubbered through an early goal from a goalmouth scrimmage and Square needed some quick replies.

Daffey worked the ball over to the hard-running Strauch and he duly goaled.

When Brett Fitzpatrick goaled off the ground and Weir got another, suddenly the Square looked threatening. But Hoiles tapped the ball over to Tyack and the skipper got the ball across to Matt Higgins to bang home the sealer.

SOUTH BENDIGO       4.2      9.8       13.16       15.24 (114)

GOLDEN SQUARE       5.0      8.5          9.7         14.8   (92)

GOALS — South Bendigo: D. McMurray 2, S. Cahoon 2, M. Keck 2, D. Ivey 2, P. Tyack 2, S. Leech, P. Bradbury, M. Higgins, P. Hall, S. Allender. Golden Square: P. McEvoy 4, D. Strauch 3, L. Daffey 2, P. Weir 2, W. Campbell, D. Moorhead, B. Fitzpatrick.

BEST – South Bendigo: P. Tyack, D. Griffin, S. Leech, B. Kendall, S. Cahoon, T. Wright, P. Bradbury, M. Higgins. Golden Square: D. Strauch, P. McEvoy, A. Patterson, W. Campbell, W. Griffiths, D.Moorhead, D. Harris, C. Lefoe.

Umpires: Geoff Millar, Alan Smith. Awards – Kevin Curran Memorial Trophy: P. Tyack (SB). Nalder Medal: D. Strauch (GS). XXXX awards: P. Tyack (SB), D. Strauch (GS). VCFL medal: P. Tyack (SB). Alexander Stenhouse coach’s award: P. Bradbury (SB).

IN THE reserves play-off it took South three quarters to shake off a dogged Eaglehawk. The Bloods held slender four-point leads only at half-time and again at three-quarter time.

However even though South produced a six-goal final term to clinch victory, 20 minutes into the last term the Two Blues were just nine points in arrears.

Eaglehawk started slowly and were goalless at the first break. It was not until the five minute mark of the second term that forward Wayne Naughton got his first of five majors to open Eaglehawk’s goal account.

The Advertiser account of the match on September 24^th mentioned that South’s Martin Harrington and Brad Fawcett were unlucky not to be in the Bloods’ senior line-up.

Harrington and Jarrod Mitchell both booted four goals for South which had gone through the reserves home-and-away rounds undefeated.

Final scores: South Bendigo 16.10 (106) def. Eaglehawk 11.13 (79). South’s best: B. Fawcett, M. Harrington, Dean Henderson, T. Pianta, C. Harrington, G. Fitzgerald, D. Pieper.

SOUTH’s under-18s laid the day for a historic day for the club with their 15-point win over Square.

The young Bloods had lost only one game on their way to the grand final. After Michael Harrington had scored South’s first major, Travis St Clair booted two of his three goals for the day in the first term as the Bloods started well.

Alister Carr scored the goal-of-the-day with a 65-metre torpedo punt at the eight-minute mark of the last term. Carr’s goal sealed Square’s fate.

Square’s Phil Hetherington (later to play seniors with South) was sent off for the mandatory 15-minute spell following a head-high tackle on a South opponent, last quarter.

Ruckman Tony Plim and defenders Glenn McMahon and Phil Kennedy were good players for the Bulldogs. Cowen booted three Square goals.

Final sores: South Bendigo 9.14 (68) def. Golden Square 8.5 (53). South’s best: D. Symons, K. Brown, M. Pavleka, S. Anderson, C. Gee, D. Pennington, T. St Clair.

UNFORTUNATELY for the 2010 Bloods they take on the undefeated Golden Square in Round 11 on June 26^th. The Bulldogs are unbackable flag favorites to make it consecutive senior flags in the BFL this season.

OVER a period of three decades I have worked with some interesting media people.

All of the ones listed here have reported on, or broadcast, Bendigo and district footy fixtures. They have then gone on to to ply their craft in Melbourne at AFL level.

In my early days at the Bendigo Advertiser it seemed the progression for young journalists went like this: Bendigo Addy, Albury Border Mail, Melbourne Herald-Sun.

A few didn’t like tabloid journalism typified by the Sun, so opted for a quality broadsheet such as The Melbourne Age.

Here’s a selection of the more memorable ones, all of them now based in Melbourne, with whom I’ve worked.

Anthony Hudson (3AW, Channel 7, Network Ten, SEN radio): Huddo was still a Year 11 student in Bendigo when he used to rock up on his bicycle for Saturday morning radio preview shows back in the 80s.

The weekend morning venue was the old Fire Station in View Street. He also cut his broadcasting teeth, so to speak, with calls of BFL matches while still a teenager.

All that must seem a distant memory to the accomplished Channel 10 match-day caller. These days he has Robert Walls, Luke Darcy, Michael Christian or the great Tim Lane alongside him.

After a stint with Ten’s news section, superkeen Geelong fan Huddo sat alongside Rex Hunt on 3AW’s AFL calls from 1996. The next move was to Channel 7 to join its front-line commentary team and also to assist in the coverage of the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

It was back to Ten from 2001 along with hosting the League Teams segment on the Fox Footy Channel.

Paul Daffey (The Age, 774 ABC Melbourne): one of a handful of acknowledged experts on Victorian country footy, Daff has penned three books about the code in metropolitan amateur or regional competitions. Perhaps his best known tome is Beyond The Big Sticks: Country Football Around Australia.

He’s also a co-founder and a co-editor of The Footy Almanac website. This spun off from three years of the comprehensive compendium entitled The Footy Almanac: the AFL Season, One Game At A time. A team of writers from every walk of life scribes the book.

In Bendigo Daff played at Golden Square in 1990 and 1991, racking up what he terms “a handful of senior games but playing mainly in the Magoos”. He says he regarded himself as a senior footballer but didn’t get himself fit enough until well into the season and wasn’t favoured by the coaching and senior player regime.

He could have been a Sandhurst player, but says “no one particularly talked to me early in the piece so I left for the Square.” He recalls getting a walloping from Sandhurst’s Brendan Hartney in the 1990 senior qualifying final.

In his working life Daff was at the Bendigo Advertiser from November 1989 to May 1992, and from there went to the Herald-Sun as a sub-editor before heading to London and a life of freelance sub-editing and writing. He’s still doing just that. Along with arranging monthly Almanac footy lunches in Melbourne for the wide spectrum of people who pen match reports for the annual Almanac footy book.

Shane Healy (3AW, 6PR Perth): we used to exchange a lot of banter about the relative merits of Heals’ beloved Essendon and my Geelong Cats. And Shane always used to say broadcasting local footy on 3BO with the legendary Dick Turner was a tough assignment.

The difficulty for Healy was trying to get a word in as Dick not only “called the board” but just about every passage of play for the entire four quarters. This scenario unfolded regularly at Bendigo matches where Healy was officially designated as the ‘co-caller’.

He headed off to 3AW, where he’s now general manager, and a calling career with Rex Hunt from 1993. A few years as general manager at 6PR in Perth ensued before he returned to 3AW as the station boss.

Following a few years away from the microphone he’s now well and truly back in the booth calling Melbourne-based matches of the round.

Mark Robinson (Herald-Sun, Channel 7, SEN radio): not a lot of people will recall Robbo won the McDonald Medal as the BFL reserves fairest and best way back in 1987. Yep, he did.

He played a number of senior games for Sandhurst, too, during his days in Bendigo.

But his working days at the Addy have long gone down in local newspaper folklore. A real tearaway in his 20s, every now and then Robbo wasn’t much good on Sunday afternoon shifts in the office. Sunday afternoons were the time when we prepared lead stories, a stack of match reports from Saturday fixtures, picture layouts, scores and goalkickers. All this plus best players from matches not just in the BFL but the district leagues, as well, for Monday‘s editions.

Occasionally Robbo was nowhere to be found while this frantic activity was going on. No computers back then. Just typewriters and copy paper. However, if someone happened to stumble into the empty interview room there would be Robbo curled up, sound asleep, on the carpet under the desk.

A Sunday afternoon nap was needed after all the hectic activity of Saturday nights/early Sunday mornings!

He’s now a very accomplished performer with the electronic media, as well as a probing and incisive writer for the Herald-Sun.

Barry Denner (National Indigenous Radio Service, Triple M): went from standing on the roof of his car at Lockington to ensure maximum mobile coverage while he filed his BFL radio reports, to co-ordinating the NIRS’ extensive weekend calls of the AFL.

From just exclusive Brisbane games as the Lion’s dedicated radio carrier, the NIRS continued to use Barry and co-caller Ronnie Rogers (another Bendigo boy) as their top match day team.

And the coverage was expanded in the mid-90s from Brisbane games solely to a complete AFL service: Friday nights, Saturday afternoon and Saturday night games and Sunday matches, where rostered.

Interstate games were not neglected. A South Australian crew was established early on and Sydney Swans’ games were also covered.

Baz has also gone on to feature on Triple M calls as part of a new contract with the Melbourne station.

FORMER AFL boundary umpire Matthew Vittiritti was chuffed when he awoke on Saturday to the cold and rain of a late May day in Bendigo.

The 300-game veteran said after running the Queen Elizabeth Oval boundary for the South Bendigo-Strathfieldsaye game the miserable conditions suited him.

“I was hoping it was going to be raining. The body’s a bit sore nowadays so the wet day suited me down to the ground. It was fantastic for me,” he said.

Now an umpires’ observer for the VFL, he said if the BUA would have him he could come back late in this Bendigo home-and-away season. Read the rest of this entry »

MOST footy followers would be aware of the never-ending stream of talent which flows from central Victoria, and especially the Bendigo Football League, into the clubs of the VFL/AFL.

Consider the four Selwood boys, Nick Dal Santo, Greg ‘Diesel’ Williams, Rod Ashman, Peter Dean, Geoff Southby, Peter McConville and Jimmy Buckley: and that’s less than a dozen.

But what about ex-top tier players who made the reverse trip up the highway to Bendigo. Here’s the second in the series of players who made their mark. Read the rest of this entry »

by Richard Jones

EAGLEHAWK celebrates its 1980 senior and reserves premierships at Canterbury Park this weekend.

Thirty years on with the 2010 top-of-the-table clash between the Two Blues and Golden Square unfolding in front of them, the flag-winning stars of yesteryear will spend a day of reminiscing.

Eaglehawk came from 14 points down late in the 1980 play-off to defeat Golden Square by two points in one of the most pulsating BFL grand finals in memory. With 16 goals landed in the frenetic last quarter the lead changed hands five times.

It was a real shootout which kept the huge QEO crowd enthralled. Read the rest of this entry »

SOUTH Bendigo played matches against a number of Melbourne-based teams in the early part of last century achieving more success at home on the Upper Reserve than in the city.

At the end of August 1904, the Bloods travelled to Melbourne for a full-scale match against VFL cub St Kilda.

The Saints posted 13 goals to four in the first three quarters, before South banged home no less than eight majors in the final stanza to go down by just 18 points. Read the rest of this entry »

FIFTY YEARS AGO IN THE B.F.L. — ROUND ONE, 1960

by Richard Jones

TWO close finishes highlighted the opening round in the BFL half a century ago, a time when life was much simpler and less hectic. Read the rest of this entry »