Australian Football

Drysdale

Drysdale’s long, noteworthy history had already seen it achieve senior grade premiership success in various competitions on at least eight occasions prior to the club’s admission to the Bellarine Football League, as a founder member, in 1971. The Hawks in fact entered the BFL having contested the previous six Geelong and District Football League Woolworths Cup grand finals, for wins in 1966, 1969 and 1970. It is therefore somewhat surprising to note that the side struggled during its early years in the new competition, not reaching the finals until 1973, and not actually winning a final until two years after that when it eventually made it as far as the grand final, only to lose to Queenscliff. This was the first of four consecutive grand final appearances for the Hawks who scored their breakthrough premiership triumph in 1976 at the expense of Torquay before going back to back the following year against Queenscliff. The 1978 season brought a disappointing grand final loss to Portarlington.

Drysdale re-emerged as a force during the mid-1980s, going on to contest four senior grand finals for the decade. Only one of these, that of 1985 against Leopold, was won, but it was won in emphatically impressive fashion by 74 points.

During the early years of the new century the Hawks fielded some strong teams but they got no closer to claiming a premiership than successive hefty grand final defeats at the hands of Ocean Grove in 2001 and 2002. Their next grand final appearance in 2009 proved much more rewarding as they accounted for Geelong Amateur by 18 points, 15.18 (108) to 13.12 (90). A year later they emulated their 1976-7 forebears by claiming successive flags. Their grand final opposition came once again from Geelong Amateur who made the Hawks fight every inch of the way for an 8 point win.

Drysdale's most recent grand final appearance came in 2013 when they lost by 53 points to Queenscliff. The following year saw the Hawks come sixth and in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 they finished eighth. The 2019 season brought marked improvement as a tally of 11 wins from 18 matches was good enough for sixth place which left them only narrowly adrift of finals qualification.