Australian Football

East Burwood

Formed in 1910, East Burwood competed initially in the Box Hill Reporter District Football League before transferring to the Scoresby District Football Association during the 1920s. After a succession of near misses, the club broke through for its first premiership in 1929, and promptly backed this up with a second the following year. The 1931 season saw East Burwood commencing in the Federal Football Association in which its success continued with back to back flags in its second and third seasons.

After the war, the club competed in the Eastern Suburban Football League, enjoying unbeaten premiership success in 1954, and adding a second flag in 1960. When the Eastern District Football League was formed in 1962 East Burwood was a foundation member before going on to become a mainstay of the competition. Its record of a dozen senior grade E(D)FL flags, all in Division One, has been surpassed only by Vermont’s eighteen.

The Rams were particularly powerful during the 1960s with the seniors contesting half a dozen grand finals and winning all except one of them. The 1970s brought another three grand final appearances, with those of 1973 against Vermont and 1976 against Scoresby ending in victories.

Displaying enviable consistency East Burwood continued to qualify regularly for the finals during both the 1980s and 1990s when another four senior grade premierships were procured. The Rams’ most recent senior grade flag came in the 2000 season via a 9 goal grand final defeat of Vermont. Emphasising its status as a competition heavyweight the club’s reserves have amassed a total of eight premierships with the various under age sides responsible for in excess of thirty.

At the end of the 2013 season the Rams finished bottom of the Division One premiership ladder and so were relegated, bringing to an end a truly impressive sequence of fifty-five successive seasons competing in the Eastern Football League's [1] top tier. Still worse was to follow as in 2016 they endured a second relegation, this time from Division Two to Division Three in which they competed for the very first time in their history in 2017. Yet again they found the standard too demanding and slumped to the wooden spoon meaning that the 2018 season saw them lining up in Division Four, where they performed quite strongly to get as far as a preliminary final loss against Glen Waverley Hawks. In 2019 the Rams topped the ladder after the home and away rounds and went on to qualify for the grand final. Favoured to win, they somewhat surprisingly found opponents Fairpark too accomplished, and slumped to defeat by 15 points.