The Australian Country Football Championships can be a serious affair. Over the first two days, the seven teams play six games of 17-minute halves. After a day’s rest, a full-scale game is held between the top two teams to decide the winner.

This year’s championships were in Canberra. The Victorian major-league team (there was also a Victorian team comprised of players from the minor leagues) had a policy of no drinking until the carnival was over. Read the rest of this entry »

Melbourne’s Eastern Football League is renowned as one of the strongest competitions in Australia. Its stocks have risen again this year because of the evenness of its first division.

Reigning premier Vermont has twice been beaten by more than 100 points, while slow-starting teams like Croydon and East Burwood are just finding their feet.

With five rounds to go, eight teams have strong claims to make the final five and the other four teams are in a relegation battle. (One goes down.) On Saturday seventh-placed Vermont defeated top team Scoresby by two points.

Vermont last year won only one of its opening six games before knuckling down. Its eventual premiership was testament to a strong club that knows how to succeed.

The Eagles this year are struggling to move up the ladder. The problem is a midfield that lacks depth. The recent return from injury Grant McCarthy and Dean Waller has provided ballast in the backline, while Saturday’s victory can only lend hope.

East Burwood was on the bottom of the ladder six weeks ago, only to win five of its past six games. Its young list has gelled. On Saturday midfielder Steve Henshaw kicked five goals in a best-on-ground performance as the Rams defeated topsy-turvy Blackburn by 33 points.

Croydon looked nowhere near the team that lost last year’s grand final to Vermont before striking a rich vein of form. Brad Kelleher, last year’s leading goalkicker, has been a revelation playing up the ground while Luke Barker has settled in at full-forward.  On Saturday Barker kicked five goals as Croydon saw off the traditionally powerful East Ringwood by 43 points.

Lilydale last year made the finals. On Friday it sacked its coach, former Collingwood player Tyson Lake, and on Saturday it climbed off the bottom of the ladder with a 34-point win over South Croydon. The Breese brothers, Ryan and Daniel, made a huge difference in their return to the Lilydale line-up.

The story of the Eastern league season is Norwood. A decade ago the Norsemen (yes, that’s their nickname) were in division four. This year they’re on target to play in their first finals series in division one.

The Norsemen’s revelation has been Leigh Williams. Williams was unable to play with TAC Cup club Eastern Ranges because of injury. Last year he played in Norwood’s defence.

This year the 20-year-old started in defence, but he’s dominated since becoming a key forward. On Saturday he kicked seven goals and was best on ground as the Norsemen defeated lowly Knox by 96 points. At a spindly 188 centimetres, he’s attracting attention from AFL scouts.

Country competitions can be consistently lop-sided, in part because they don’t have promotion and relegation. The Goulburn Valley league, however, often features teams climbing and sliding from year to year. With five round to go this season, nine teams are in with a chance to make the Goulburn Valley’s top six.

Two weeks ago Echuca slid from first to fourth after being thrashed by Shepparton United. On Saturday Echuca responded to an old-fashioned tongue-lashing from coach Brett Henderson to defeat Tatura by 61 points. Former North Melbourne player Joel Perry kicked 10 for the winners.

Shepparton United was four goals ahead with five minutes to go in its clash against Mooroopna. Mooroopna kicked three late goals to go down by only six points and set up a tantalising possible clash in the finals.

The wild card is Shepparton Swans, who can strut one week and stumble the next. On Saturday the Swans held sixth spot by defeating Euroa by 51 points. Former Melbourne high-flyer Russell Robertson kicked nine to take his tally to 82.

Elsternwick Amateur Football Club’s greatest rivals

The Elsternwick Amateur Football Club was not long formed when it joined the Metropolitan Amateur Football Association, which later became the VAFA, in 1914.

The Wickers played in A-section for the next 25 years, winning premierships in 1920 and ’25, but since 1939 it has experienced the entire gamut of amateur footy. Elsternwick has played in every grade from A to G, which is now known as Division 4. The Wickers’ most recent flag was in Division 4 in 2005.

By playing in every section in Australia’s biggest footy competition for such a long time, the Wickers have pitted themselves against more clubs than any other. Its rival in its Division 3 game on Saturday, Yarra Valley Old Boys, was the 142^nd club it has played in senior competition.

The only current Amateur clubs Elsternwick is yet to play are Mazenod, Point Cook, Mt Lilydale and South Mornington. The last three are recent additions to Amateur footy. If this year’s Division 4 season goes according to seeding, Elsternwick might just play Mt Lilydale and South Mornington next season.

The Wickers play in Essendon jumpers. They have jumper clashes with La Trobe University and Old Xaverians. If they play La Trobe, one club wears a white set of jumpers from Amateur headquarters.

One of the last times they played Old Xavs was in 1951. In that game, explained Elsternwick historian Col Page, both clubs just wore their regular strips.

“In those days there was no such thing as jumper clashes,” Page said.

Page’s father George coached the 1951 team to the D-section premiership. The captain and vice-captain from that team, Bill Elliott and Russell Nash, were at the Elsternwick past players’ lunch on Saturday.

Elliott, 88, and Nash, 83, shared roving duties in 1951. The star in their team was 16-year-old centre half-back Don Williams, who was later a premiership star at Melbourne. Elliott and Nash said the Wickers’ biggest rival in that era was Parkdale.

In the grand final against Parkdale, Elliott, Nash and centreman Ron Neville proved 50 years ahead of their time when they rotated through the rover, centre and back pocket positions.

“We confused them,” Elliott said. “They didn’t know where we were!”

David Mahoney played 300 games for Elsternwick and was named at full-back in the team of the century. He said the biggest rival in the 1970s was West Brunswick. “We just seemed to play them a lot.”

Their rivalry bred a certain familiarity. In those days, it was common for one club to promise a barrel to the other if their rival could pull off a victory to help their cause. This happened when one team was trying to make the four or avoid relegation.

Elsternwick’s strongest rival in recent years has been Albert Park. In 1991 Albert Park club was still known by its original name, ANZ Bank. The Bankers were so heavily favoured to win their F-section grand final against Elsternwick that they hired marquees and prepared elaborate celebrations.

“We rolled them,” said former Elsternwick ruckman and president Adam Harkin.

On Saturday the current president, Antony Blackshaw, indicated the club’s plight when he pointed out that a house near their ground, the No.2 oval at Elsternwick Park, was expected to fetch $2.2 million at auction that day.

“Not many 25-year-olds can buy in Elwood or Elsternwick,” he said.

The Wickers have no juniors. Their players tend to be sons of former players or blow-ins who live in flats near the ground. But the club does have spirit.

On Saturday, as the past players gathered on the Graham Holmes Memorial Wing (so named because of stalwart Holmes’s recent death), the Wickers fought off a challenge from Yarra Valley to win by nine points.

Another foe was vanquished.

READERS who glanced at the Victorian footy results pages in on Sunday would have been excused for thinking their porridge had been sprinkled with tangerine dream.

The Victorian Amateur Football Association’s Premier B section features six of the 10 teams in equal top position. The seventh team, Uni Blacks, has a percentage that ranks it fifth. The eighth team, Hampton Rovers, is theoretically two games from top spot.

It’s not irregular to have logjams on VAFA ladders. The policy of promoting and relegating two teams in each division makes for plenty of drama. Every year you get one or two teams across the seven senior divisions that are simultaneously fighting for a position in the top four while fighting to stave off relegation.

Even so, the weekend’s Premier B ladder is extraordinary. A scan of the Premier B ladders from round 11 over the past decade reveals a few noteworthy clusters, such as in 2005 and 2009, but nothing like this year’s unparalleled plateau. Amateurs stalwarts told The Footy Almanac they can remember nothing like it.

The rise of Old Carey Grammarians to top spot compounds a heady season for the Bulleen club. Old Carey was formed in 1954. Before this year, its best result was fifth in Premier B in the mid-’70s.

The next season the Panthers lost four young guns to Uni Blues, including the great Michael Yeo, and the club sank back into ignominy.

This season started poorly for the Panthers when they lost the first two games. Then the new players settled in. Two rounds ago, the Panthers achieved a club first when they reached fourth spot in Premier B. After last week they were third.

On Saturday night, after seeing off Old Ivanhoe by 76 points, the Panthers were elated to find themselves in top spot. But their joy has been reined in. If they lose the next two games, to Uni Blacks and Old Haileybury, they could find themselves back in eighth.

The springboard for Old Carey’s surge has been the half-back line of Cam Howat (21 AFL games for Richmond), Lachie McQueen (former full-back for Box Hill) and Grant Baldwin (former Melbourne Cricket Club batsman and contracted player with Victoria). A fortnight ago, they formed the half-back line in the Amateurs team that defeated AFL Sydney. Baldwin was best on ground.

Baldwin has been a revelation since quitting cricket last summer so he could play local footy. His ability to run with the ball and boot 60 metres on either foot has some wondering whether he could play at a higher level.

On Saturday Howat was best on ground while Julian Rowe, the former Collingwood player, provided the game’s highlight with a two-storey screamer on the wing.

In other results among the teams equal on top, Old Haileybury saw off St Kevin’s (with Brett Voss kicking five for the Bloods), St Bernard’s had a late surge to get over Old Essendon, and Oakleigh overcame Hampton Rovers.

This Friday marks a special occasion for the Murray Football League: it’s the 50^th anniversary of the day a hastily cobbled-together team of Murray league players became one of the few country teams to defeat a VFL visitor.

Practice matches between country teams and VFL teams were common from footy’s earliest days right up until about 1970. It often happened that a VFL team headed bush on the weekend that Victoria played an interstate match. Read the rest of this entry »

Title: Wednesday Warriors: Doing it for the jumper: the St Pat’s Ballarat tradition

Author: James Gilchrist

Publisher: Conor Court Publishing, Ballan, Victoria (2010)

The recent launch of James Gilchrist’s excellent book on his season following the first eighteen from St Pat’s Ballarat was held at the Celtic Club in Melbourne. The venue was appropriate considering that, since the time St Pat’s stated fielding footy teams in 1893, a large number of the college’s players have been the sons of Western District potato farmers of Irish stock who’ve come in to board at the famous college.

I spent a good part of the launch in a circle with half a dozen high-achieving sons of St Pat’s, like Paul James, the 1983 St Pat’s captain and best-and-fairest. In speaking to James I had the chance to ask about my one game against St Pat’s, in a practice match at the St Bernard’s oval in Essendon in 1982.

St Bernard’s was a Christian Brothers school, like St Pat’s, but it wasn’t a boarding school. In my day it was a very local school. Every St Bernard’s student lived within three kilometres of the senior campus. On the day we hosted the St Pat’s footballers, we scooted down the hill towards the oval on bikes or on foot, wearing any old tracksuit, feeling bedraggled from the weekend’s activities and the unaccustomed demand of representing the school on a non-school day. Read the rest of this entry »

Essendon 23.18 (156) v Geelong 19.18 (132)

Richmond players had every reason to cringe at the sight of Gary Ablett, whose prolific scoring against the Tigers is the stuff of legend. Ablett’s best haul against the Yellow and Black was 14 goals at the MCG in 1989. As legend would have it, The Great Man kicked these goals from a wing and half-forward. But, really, did he? This detail has always smacked of legend outstripping truth. In any case, Richmond was hopeless in those days (insert cheap shot here) and it surprised few that Ablett was able to outscore the Tigers on his own. Without doubt, he gave a superior performance when he kicked 14 goals against the young Essendon tyros in the famous shootout at the MCG in 1993. Arguably, it was Ablett’s greatest match. Given his reputation as the best footballer in the history of the game (timely pause) on his day, it stands to reason that it was also the best performance in a home-and-away game. Ablett kicked a few goals from leads and a couple from free-kicks. But to increase the style quotient, he nailed a banana on the run from a tight angle and booted a goal during the tense last quarter after taking a mark of inconceivable strength. With three Essendon opponents trying to retard him, Ablett leapt straight up and gripped the footy so fast that it almost exploded (well, maybe not). In all, he saw off three opponents—Chris Daniher, Derek Kickett and a youthful James Hird—on his way to kicking 14.7. At the other end, Paul Salmon kicked 10.6 before limping off in the last quarter with a hamstring injury, having shown the Bombers the way to victory. Geelong’s loss in the face of Ablett’s heroics prompted Malcolm Blight into one of his philosophical asides. “It’s almost unfair,” he said. Read the rest of this entry »

Dan Noonan and Dan Nicholson are contrasting footballers. Noonan is big and solid, able to patrol a backline with his presence as much as his sure hands and timely fist. Nicholson is small and nippy, able to baulk and shimmy before kicking long in to the forward line.

On Sunday the two Dans represented the Victorian Amateur Football Association in the under-19 representative game against the Victorian Country Football League at Sportscover Arena in Elsternwick. Read the rest of this entry »

In over forty years teaching in country towns and living in local communities I saw, met and mixed with thousands of young people. I saw kids who went on to represent their state and nation in various sports but I never saw anyone the like of Terry Bartel.

I was only connected with Terry for four years in his mid to late teens but I did get to know him well through school and cricket. I can remember many stories about students, but I could write a book on Terry. Read the rest of this entry »

In 2004, Victorian suburban and country footballers would have thought it more likely to be drafted into an astronaut program than to be drafted on to an AFL list. Even the VFL was barely on the radar for AFL clubs. Few recruiting managers were prepared to look beyond the elite under-18 competition, the TAC Cup.

There was one exception. Midway through the 2004 season, Sydney recruiting boss Ricky Barham went to the Victorian country footy championships at Ballarat and saw a tall wingman and forward make a claim to become local footy’s Chuck Yaegar. The player was 20-year-old Luke Vogels from the Hampden league. Read the rest of this entry »