A Season in the Country – 1975 in the Wimmera and Farrer Leagues: Prologue

 

 

 

 

Lockhart Recreation Ground

 

 

 

 

1975 in the Wimmera and Farrer leagues

 

The year of the Rats, the Tigers and the Kangaroos

 

 

Prologue

 

Country football is a winter Saturday afternoon institution across broad expanses of Australia. It is a chance for men, women and their families to get away from the tractor, the farm chores, from behind the counter of the shop in town, the kitchen and the backyard games to drift into another world for a few hours of association, pleasure and excitement.

 

Across the fertile cropping and grazing country of the Wimmera and the Riverina regions, 1975 was just another year.  As farmers looked skyward in anticipation of rain during March and April, football clubs started up again, likewise full of hope and expectation. In the end only one would be the local premier but the promise of the season’s journey never failed to win the hearts and minds of the players and their loyal supporters.

 

In the Wimmera country of Victoria, a football league has shared the same name as the region for over a century. Meanwhile, the eastern Riverina region has been home to a handful of footy leagues, with one named after the wheat-breeding pioneer William Farrer.

 

A season in the country is set in the Wimmera and Farrer Leagues, football territories where town names like Dimboola, Rupanyup, Warracknabeal, Mangoplah, Cookardinia and Collingullie roll off the tongue. In this series we will stand behind the goals and sing along in the sheds at the footy grounds of the Wimmera and the Farrer Leagues. Among the backdrops we will tour the main streets, see the landmarks and visit the historic sites, drive along the country roads, follow the creeks and rivers and climb the heights on offer.

 

We will also celebrate the shared German heritage of the two regions established by the wheat-growing pioneers from South Australia who, with great adventure and optimism, took up land at places such as Walla Walla, Temora, Henty, Lockhart, Holbrook, Warracknabeal, Nhill, Jeparit, Murtoa and Minyip. Land was not the only thing they took up, as the football and netball team lists continue to reveal.

 

The iconic image of the Lockhart Recreation Ground, with its peppercorn trees shading the fence-side car parking spaces and the grain silos standing witness in the background, will invite readers each week into the world of country footy in the wheat belts of NSW and Victoria.

 

 

The Wimmera League

 

The Wimmera League is firmly rooted in Western Victoria’s Wimmera region. The Wimmera geographic region extends from the Grampians in the south east to the South Australian border in the west and the Mallee country in the north. The provincial city of Horsham lies at its heart and now serves as a take-off point for the Wimmera-Mallee Silo Art Trail, a popular detour that reveals novel images of the land, the people and the life of the region. Today the concrete and steel towers hold much more than the Wimmera-Mallee’s golden grain.

 

 

Does anyone know where this is?

 

 

And this one?

 

 

One might ask, are there surfaces on the stately cylinders that could house a gallery of the Wimmera’s favourite football sons of yesteryear? Picture the possibilities: the mercurial torpedo-firing full forward of Geelong fame; Rupanyup’s steely-strong goal scoring Swan; the unwavering indigenous All Australian champion from Horsham; Ararat’s enigmatic “incredible hulk”; the evergreen, strutting Bomber number 32 and his hometown contemporary, the speedy, swerving Dimboola Don.  Make room for Wade, Sudholz, Goodes, Kink, Watson and Neagle!

 

 

 

 

 

Location of clubs in the Wimmera League (1975)

 

FJ Conway’s (1935) romantic description of the Wimmera landscape provides an evocative and optimistic portrait of its colour and its wealth.

 

 

The Kalkee plains, after winter rains,

Are a waving emerald green,

With growing crops to the fences’ tops,

And the road like a thread between.

 

With wheat and wool, are the barns o’er full,

There’s fruit and flower and fern.

There’s radiant health, allied to wealth,

Where nature never lags,

And of the Wimmera “brags”.

 

Its Golden Grain is a State-wide gain,

Well rewarded is man’s toil,

‘Twill give of its best, for by Nature blest

Is the famous Wimmera soil.

 

There’s never an ill wind blows,

The sun is in its bed, sinks glowing red,

In the land where the Wimmera flows.

 

 

Today, the Wimmera’s wealth is enriched by a film culture that draws upon the landscape, the people and the past. The dry land  setting of the Wimmera and its small town streetscapes have become a magnet for movie makers in a similar way to the attraction of outback Broken Hill and Silverton in years before.

 

Football commenced under the banner of the Wimmera Football Association in 1902, with Ararat, Horsham and Stawell as the founding clubs. In 1921 it matured into the Wimmera District Football League with Minyip, Murtoa, Rupanyup and Warracknabeal joining the three original clubs to make a seven club competition. In an early coup for the bush league, legendary South Melbourne footballer Roy Cazaly spent a season at Minyip in 1925.

 

Of notable historical interest, the Wimmera League and the Gippsland League were pioneers in interleague championship matches played at the MCG in the 1928-31 period. After a brief flirtation with the Ballarat Football League (1934-36) the Wimmera clubs went back to their geographic roots in 1937.

 

The Wimmera League has remained a remarkably stable competition with few changes to its composition over the past 120 years. Horsham and Ararat remain the most successful clubs with 26 and 11 premierships respectively. Zoned to Essendon, the Wimmera League has produced a clutch of champion VFL/AFL players including Bombers Tim Watson and Merv Neagle (from Dimboola), Sydney’s Adam Goodes and Geelong’s Doug Wade (Horsham).

 

 

 

The Farrer League

 

The Farrer League has been an important part of the fabric of Australian Football in the Riverina region of NSW for over 60 years. This is wheat and sheep country situated north of the Murray River and both sides of the Murrumbidgee centred on the inland sporting mecca of Wagga Wagga.

 

The city is not just a sporting mecca but also a sporting nursery. With its Riverina Sporting Hall of Fame bulging with tributes to home-grown heroes including the Mortimers, Kelly, Lawson, Carey, Slater, Taylor, Brentnall, Twitt, Elkington, Roche and Sterling, to name a handful, Wagga is mighty proud of its sporting sons and daughters.

 

 

 

 

 

Location of clubs in the Farrer League (1975)

 

In its several incarnations, the Farrer League has existed since 1957 although its spheres of influences have shifted geographically over time. Born out of the Albury and Border District League in the late 1950’s, the Farrer League’s affiliated teams have changed almost as often as the weather and market conditions experienced by the farmers of the region. Initially the league served the southern parts of the region from Wagga Wagga down the rail line to Culcairn and with a sprinkling of clubs from locations both east and west. Gradually new teams entered as others departed, some into oblivion, some into recess or into adjoining leagues only to re-join some years later.

 

The winds of change arrived with full force in 1982 with a major reformation and realignment of the teams from the three Riverina leagues: the South Western District, Farrer and Central Riverina leagues. The new concoction of football associations from 1982 consisted of the Riverina Football League and the Riverina and District Football League (with two divisions). Most of the old Farrer League clubs went into the two Riverina and District League divisions, with the stronger South Western District League teams dominating the new Riverina Football League.

 

The Farrer League was reincarnated in 1985 with a collection of clubs from both south and north of the ‘Bidgee. Clubs have continued to enter, exit and re-enter the league, much like sheep dogs at work around a shearing shed. Others amalgamated for greater strength and the hope of survival, while some took on emerging partners from around the city of Wagga Wagga. In the 21^st Century the Farrer league’s geographical centre has shifted to the north and west of the Murrumbidgee.

 

One club may lay claim to being the best ‘combine’ of all, The Rock (later and for a long time, The Rock-Yerong Creek) has remained faithful to the Farrer League for a shade over 60 years. The Rock joined the Farrer League in 1958, the league’s second season, and in 1962 amalgamated with the nearby railway and farming settlement of Yerong Creek. The Rock-Yerong Creek has remained an affiliated club with the league ever since, winning six premierships, while some twenty or more football club entities have come, gone and occasionally reappeared.

 

The Farrer League has been fertile recruiting ground for South Melbourne/Sydney Swans securing, among others, Paul Kelly, John Pitura (Wagga Tigers) and Colin Hounsell (Collingullie), while North Melbourne champion Wayne Carey and St. Kilda’s goal kicking legend Bill Mohr started their football with North Wagga and Wagga Wagga (Imperials) respectively.

 

 

**

 

Away from country footy, 1975 is remembered as the year North Melbourne won its first VFL flag. It was also a year in which threatened court action concerning player transfer rights and restraint of trade, with a former Wagga player at the centre, threatened to rip the zoning system apart.

 

Back to the events at the MCG on the last Saturday in September, the ‘Shinboners’, well stocked with country players, upset powerhouse Hawthorn. Among the country ‘boys’ playing with North was a former Horsham (Wimmera League) full forward who talked his coach and selectors into picking him for the last Saturday in September. Despite his indifferent form leading up to the Grand Final, the decision-makers at Arden Street took a risk and were rewarded in spades.

 

In the end 1975 was the year of the Rats (Ararat), the Tigers (Wagga) and the Kangaroos (North Melbourne). And as Lou Richards predicted, wherever you were, it was “a hot time in the old town” that night.

 

In A season in the country we will follow the progress of those three clubs throughout 1975 and reflect on how each achieved their premiership success. Unlike my previous Footy Almanac series, 1966 and all that and Geelong’s Record Run, the focus will be squarely on country football. Each week of the home and away season the focus will alternate between the two country leagues. Episode 1 next week starts in the Riverina with the clash between Farrer League rivals  Mangoplah Cookardinia United and Culcairn.

 

We will also tune into the speculation in the Wimmera that Ararat might succumb to the overtures from the Ballarat League. Would geography and financial considerations outweigh loyalty and a long term affiliation with the Wimmera League?

 

Among the players profiled throughout the series we will meet a Farrer League legend who racked up close to 550 games and a Wimmera League great whose coaching career spanned almost 50 years. Along the way we will catch up with two former South Melbourne teammates from the late 1960s – one who came from Rupanyup and the other from Holbrook. Forever linked, the Wimmera man was in the bridal party at the wedding of his ‘Bloods’ football companion who later starred with the Wagga Tigers.

 

 

Meanwhile in Canberra that year… The Member for Wannon (a Federal electorate in western Victoria, including parts of the Wimmera) was busy plotting the downfall of the Whitlam Labor government.

 

Apart from the ‘The Dismissal’, national and world events in ’75 included the fall of Saigon, the Indonesian invasion of East Timor, the Tasman Bridge disaster, the inaugural Cricket World Cup and the introduction of colour television in Australia. In harness racing it was the time of Paleface Adios, the “Temora Tornado” vs. Hondo Grattan, the “Bathurst Bulldog”.

 

At the cinema Australian films were drawing them in to watch classics including Picnic at Hanging Rock and Sunday Too Far Away, while the footy-themed comedy The Great McCarthy promised more than it delivered. On the Australian music scene 1975 was a feast of Sherbet and Skyhooks, with Countdown compulsory viewing every Sunday evening after a big weekend of footy and fun.

 

 

Throughout the 2022 AFL season come on a football journey across the wheat fields of the Wimmera and eastern Riverina as we turn back the scoreboards to 1975.

 

 

 

 

To Geelong’s Record Run, click HERE.

 

 

Peter also wrote about St. Kilda’s premiership season in his 1966 and All That series. You can read that HERE.

 

 

 

To return to our Footy Almanac home page click HERE.

 

 

Our writers are independent contributors. The opinions expressed in their articles are their own. They are not the views, nor do they reflect the views, of Malarkey Publications.

 

 

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