Almanac Footy and Community – Premiership photos
Muddy and magnificent – the champion U17 Melbourne High School Old Boys side featured our own David Wilson (aka E.regnans) in 1991 [Source: Author. Click any image to enlarge]
Melbourne High School Old Boys Under 17.
Premiers Waverley Junior Football Association 1991
MHSOB 5.2.32 d De La Salle College 3.3.21
Yesterday I saw my favourite premiership photo. ‘Crazy’ had posted it on Facebook. ‘Thirty years ago,’ he wrote. ‘1991 MHS U/17 flag.’
Driving to the river yesterday, I was trying to follow Paul McCartney’s bass line to George Harrison’s ‘Something’ with the dog alongside me. The Yarra had been under moderate flood warning over the weekend and I had a hydrologist’s urge to see her. Curved sweeps of lowland bends at Fairfield totally full of water. Bank-full. And the Merri Creek falling over herself through the twisted bluestone gorge of Northcote, around behind the Clifton Hill, racing to join in.
So I’m in the car park with the dog. Maybe I’ll take a photo. I reach for the phone and boom, there is the Melbourne High School’s U17 premiership side of 1991 looking back at me through showery rain and 30 years.
Already I stood primed with the fuel of Old Dog’s recent story on premierships. And here was the spark.
One image that helped inspire this post: Lilydale’s reigning premiership side, former Apple Isle footy home of ‘Old Dog’ Matt Zurbo [Source: Matt Zurbo]
— ‘Imagine seeing premiership photos all lined up.’ —
If you have a premiership photo you’d like to share, send them to [email protected] and we’ll post them here as they bubble in!
Wycheproof U16s in 1969 – home of Tiger legend Merv Keane [Source: Wycheproof-Narraport FC]
Read Sean Mortell’s most recent tale of Wyche in 1969 HERE.
Colac Youth Club Premiership Team 1966 [Source: Colin Ritchie]
Colac Youth Club Premiership Team 1965 [Source: Colin Ritchie]
Read more about Col’s somewhat starring role in the 1966 side HERE
The sole flag winning side to feature our own Darren ‘Smokie’ Dawson, Williamstown United U15s in 1980. [Source: Smokie Dawson]
Hawthorn YCW U19s premiers 1965, Peter Fuller is a member of the side (Middle row, Third from left) and next to him is Bill McVeigh, friend of the Almanac [Source: Peter Fuller]
Yorketown Senior Colts premiers 1970, Peter Baulderstone is situated Middle Row, Third from right [Source: Peter Baulderstone]
Read Swish Schwerdt’s story about this premiership HERE
Great report from another of Swish’s premiership glories. Read it HERE
Swish’s report of this premiership can be read HERE
Swish’s report of this premiership can be read HERE
Editor Jarrod Landells had to dig deep into a different football code for his sole premiership photo: Phillip Island Indoor Outdoor Soccer Club U12 premiers 1997 [Source: Jarrod Landells]
Jason Buffier and the Waverley Rugby Club (RFSC) after winning the Judd Cup in the Sydney subbies comp of 1995. Jason is bottom right looking away.
Back-to-back premierships for “Gippy Power” in a Melbourne competition of AFL7s. 2020/21. [Source: Ben Robbins]
The Castlemaine Woollen Mill Ladies football team of 1948, which were named Premiers after defeating a combined women’s team from Daylesford. [Source: Thea Allen]
The Tigers (Covid) Almanac 2020 will be published in 2021. It will have all the usual features – a game by game account of the Tigers season – and will also include some of the best Almanac writing from the Covid winter. Pre-order HERE
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About David Wilson
David Wilson is a hydrologist, climate reporter and writer of fiction & observational stories. He writes under the name “E.regnans” at The Footy Almanac and has stories in several books. One of his stories was judged as a finalist in the Tasmanian Writers’ Prize 2021. He shares the care of two daughters and likes to walk around feeling generally amazed. Favourite tree: Eucalyptus regnans.
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(Here’s that JP McCartney bass line):
Ah, Regnans, mon fils, as an old bass player myself, it looks like Macca is playing the playing the Rickenbacker bass here, as opposed to his earlier (and later Hofner) violin bass. Probably the best McCartney bass line, in my opinion, is in the Beatles’ single B-side “Rain” – the A -side being “Paperback Writer”.
That black and white premiership photo was taken in 1991.
I played Under 17 again in 1992. We did not make the Grand Final.
And I never played in a competitive weekend team again.
So that is a photo of my most recent premiership team.
Some very good players in that side. And an outstanding coach in W A Fall.
Good times.
Interesting overall piece, too, I should add – I like the idea behind it.
Great stuff Er. Were you in ruck and resting in the forward pocket?
Thanks Kevin.
Ruck certainly, Mickey. This was 1991. I was probably more in the specialist Harry Madden mould rather than the athletic and coordinated and multi-dimensional J Stynes mould. Though I used to love scrounging for the ball in a pack and feeding out a handball. I’d much rather do that than take a shot at goal.
Forward pocket became a distant dream after one fateful day at Royal Park, when I reckon I missed three in a row from point-blank range.
To be fully transparent for those that haven’t read the linked story, I didn’t actually play in that U/15s Grand Final.
And you won’t spot me in that first Blacks photo (of the three above) because that isn’t my team, but it does feature Malcolm ‘Rulebook’ Ashwood, kneeling front row first on left.
Great idea. Love the piece. And so many stories in these photographs too.
Love the full initials in Swish’s. Keen to know J.M.G. Leyland’s full name. I’m guessing James Martin Geoffrey Leyland.
This is gold! Loved picking out all the faces in the old photos.
Ps Especially love Macca’s bass in “Dear Prudence”.
JTH – Better known as “British”, he was John Michael something Leyland, but answered to “Mike”. That was his last game for the Blacks – I never saw him again.
Love it. Soccer, Rugby, AFL7s… 1965, 2021. Tassie, South Australia… Love it.
Superb.
Bit of history in all this. Very local history.
This is an excellent thread.
Great idea, e.r.
The coach in my pic is the late George Fairley, wonderful junior coach (and father of Ian).
Brilliant. The ’91 photo, with that rain, looks like 1891. And, las with the best poets, everything you do has a soundtrack!
Thanks so much for all contributions.
Thanks Col.
Thanks Smokie.
Thanks Swish.
Thanks Jason.
Thanks Ben.
Thanks Thea Allen. What a photo that is!