Australian Football

Keilor

A Keilor football team is known to have existed as early as 1894, but it was not until 1926 that a formally constituted Keilor Football Club first engaged in official competition as an inaugural member of the Keilor and Broadmeadows Football League. Keilor spent half a dozen seasons in the KBFL, winning senior grade premierships in 1926 and 1928, before crossing to the Essendon District Football League, which was just about to embark on its third season, in 1932.

Compared to clubs such as Ascot Vale, Woodland and La Mascotte prior to world war two, and the likes of Doutta Stars and Moonee Imperials after it, Keilor was not advantageously located when it came to having access to large pools of potential players, and it was largely as a consequence of this that the club’s early performances were undistinguished. However, it perservered, and in 1968 finally broke through to win a B Grade premiership, its first at senior level for forty years. The victorious side was captain-coached by former Daylesford and South Melbourne player Norm McKenzie who was still with Keilor five years later, albeit only as a player, when the club broke through for its first ever EDFL A Grade flag. 

In compliance with an emerging trend, Keilor had dispensed with the idea of a playing coach by this time, and the premiership team was led from the sidelines by John Edwards, with Paul Blanks as the on-field leader. Also in the side was arguably the greatest player in Keilor’s history, Bruce Ellis, who in 1973 was in the third season of a 257 game career that would see him win no fewer than seven club best and fairest awards, easily a record. By the time he retired as a player after the club had won the 1985 A Grade premiership, Ellis, who played most of his football as a key position forward, had for good measure also topped Keilor’s goal kicking list on five occasions. He was the only player to appear in both the 1973 and 1985 grand final wins.

Since capturing the 1985 A Grade flag Keilor has been by some measure the EDFL’s most successful club, adding further A Grade/Premier Division successes in 1988, 1995-6-7, 2000-1, 2008 and 2016. There have also been a number of disappointments, perhaps best exemplified by a 2003 season which produced a 100% record from 18 home and away matches followed by an 11.11 (77) to 5.6 (36) second semi final win over Oak Park. In the grand final re-match a fortnight later, however, the Keilor players inexplicably fell in a hole largely of their own creation and allowed the ‘Roos to run all over them and romp to victory by 59 points. More recently, the 2018 season ended in considerable disappointment as the Blues, who had topped the ladder after the home and away rounds, succumbed to a 61 point grand final loss to Aberfeldie.

Such reversals tend to form part of every great club’s heritage as they only ever arise in the context of performances of consistently high standard. Keilor’s performances have been of a consistently high standard for more than three decades now, and further successes in the near future would surprise no-one. Vital to that success is the health of the club as a whole, not merely in terms of the achievements of the senior team. Clear evidence of that health in Keilor’s case can be inferred from the fact that, in 2017, it fielded teams for both sexes and in every age group from under nines upwards each weekend. If past experience is a reliable indicator, many of the players in these teams will spend their entire football lives with Keilor, thereby reinforcing both the club’s own unique cultural identity, and its importance in the local community - an importance that derives from, but also in a sense transcends, the high profile business of winning premierships.