Australian Football

Brighton

Known to have been in existence at least as early as 1885, Brighton was a foundation member in 1892 of the Metropolitan Junior Football Association, direct antecedent of today’s Victorian Amateur Football Association. The club spent a total of sixteen successive seasons in the MJFA, winning a premiership in 1903. In 1908 the club crossed to the VFA, along with Northcote.

Brighton made a sound start to its VFA adventure, winning 8 out of 18 matches on debut, and 11 out of 18 a year later. However, it was not until 1926, under the coaching of former Fitzroy player Gordon Rattray, that the side first contested the finals. Moreover, during forty-nine years of involvement in the VFA as a discrete organisation between 1908 and 1961 Brighton won only one flag, in 1948. The achievement was all the more meritorious in that virtually all of the victorious players had been recruited locally. Under a prudent but ambitious committee, the post-war Penguins, as they became known in 1947, played an exhilarating attacking brand of football which, for a short time at least, took the VFA by storm. 

After setting the pace early in the 1948 season, Brighton ultimately qualified for the finals in third place. A comfortable first semi final win over Northcote and a hard fought preliminary final defeat of Brunswick then set up a grand final showdown with competition heavyweights Williamstown, but the Penguins were far from overawed, and won in style, 13.16 (94) to 13.7 (85). Led by former Northcote player Col Williamson (one of the few ‘imports’), Brighton’s victory was based on solid, purposeful team play coupled with a refusal to be intimidated by the Seagulls’ trademark strong arm tactics.

After again going close in 1949 and 1950 (third place each time), Brighton was to endure an absolutely horrific decade during which, confronted by a combination of public apathy and poor on field performances, the club’s very existence was repeatedly called into question.

When Brighton lost occupancy of its home ground at Elsternwick Park prior to the 1962 season it relocated to Caulfield and entered into a merger with local team, South Caulfield, in the process adopting the new name of Brighton-Caulfield.

As Brighton, or Brighton-Caulfield, between 1908 and 1964, the club participated in the finals on nine occasions, and its overall success rate in all matches was 37.1%. Between 1952 and 1963 though that success rate plummeted to a dire 13.5% before, in 1964, the club unexpectedly enjoyed a brief Indian summer by procuring a number of ex-Moorabbin players, who were without a club following the Kangaroos’ compulsory disaffiliation from the Association. With these new recruits on board the combine qualified for the finals, albeit that this was in Division Two, the VFA having introduced a two division system three years earlier. The combine ultimately finished fourth, but it was becoming increasingly clear that what had started as a marriage of convenience had evolved into a crisis of identity. Brighton residents could feel scant sense of identification with a club based in Caulfield, while Caulfield residents objected to the Brighton connection. 

In 1965 the matter was resolved, albeit not entirely to everyone’s satisfaction, by dropping the word ‘Brighton’ from the club’s name. Playing under the Bears emblem, Caulfield would spend the next twenty-three seasons in the VFA, forging out a tradition that should probably be regarded as wholly separate from that of the Penguins.