Australian Football

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KEY FACTS

Official name
Melbourne High School Old Boys Football Club

Known as
MHS OB

Formed
1907

Colours
Maroon, black and green

Emblem
Unicorns

Affiliation (Current)
Victorian Amateur Football Association (VAFA) 1929–2024

Senior Premierships
B Section - 1946, 1952, 1961 (3 total); C Section/Premier C - 1939, 1960, 2004, 2009 (4 total); D Section - 1937, 1991 (2 total)

Championships and Trophies
JN Woodrow Medal – Ian Turnbull 1962; John ‘Jock’ Nelson 1964 & 1965 (2 medallists/3 medals); GT Moore Medal – W.J. Backhouse 1946; John 'Jock' Nelson 1959 & 1961 (2 medallists/3 medals); LS Zachariah Medal – L.W. Boyd-Gerny 1938; John 'Jock' Nelson 1960; Robert J. Skinner 1994; Matthew J. White 2004 (4 total); LS Pepper Medal – G.S. Todd 1984 (1 total); J Fullerton Medal – Timothy Harper 2015 (1 total)

Website
www.footy.mhsoba.asn.au

MHS OB

Originally known as the Melbourne Continuation School, Melbourne High School was founded in 1905. Two years later an Old Boys Association, out of which the football club emerged, was established. Melbourne High School today is the only selective state school in Victoria for boys in years 9 to 12.

Although the Melbourne High School Old Boys Football Club did not officially come into being until 1928, a team of former pupils took the field as early as 1907 when it engaged in a match against the school eighteen.

Admitted to the VAFA’s C Section in 1928, MHSOB struggled to make an impression, and when the side first qualified for the finals in 1936 it was actually in D Section, the Association having expanded to four tiers in 1932. In 1937 MHSOB won its first senior grade flag with a 16.18 (114) to 10.16 (76) grand final defeat of Mount Carmel Old Collegians. The win was a prelude to the club’s first ‘golden era’, albeit that this was vitiated by the impact of war.

The 1938 season saw the team reach the C Section finals for the first time, ultimately finishing third. The following year brought further improvement and with it a second senior flag thanks to an 18.12 (120) to 12.18 (90) grand final victory against St Paul’s. Any even loftier aspirations that the club might have nursed had to be shelved midway through the 1940 season, however, as the VAFA went into recess owing to the war.

Arguably the club’s noteworthy player in the pre-war period, if not of all time, was Keith ‘Bluey’ Truscott, a dynamic and highly creative centreman who could also perform well at full forward when required. During the 1934 season he twice booted 10 goals in a match after being shifted to the goalfront, and he was one of MHSOB’s first ever Victorian representatives that same year. In 1937 he crossed to Melbourne in VFL and played in the club’s 1939 and 1940 premiership-winning sides. His major claim to fame had nothing to do with football, however. During the war he served with enormous distinction in both the RAF and RAAF and was feted as a national hero. He died tragically in March 1943 when he went down with his plane during a target practice exercise in Exmouth, Western Australia.

During the war the VAFA’s junior competition continued, with MHSOB successful in procuring premierships in 1943 and 1945. Several members of these junior premiership sides went on to serve the club well when full scale, open age football resumed after the war. In 1946, coached by Percy Stitch, and with Bill Nottle as skipper, MHSOB won the B Section flag without losing a match, earning the title of ‘champions’. Members of the team which comfortably accounted for Old Melburnians in the grand final included Ernie Young, George Morris, Frank Fischer, Alex Johnson, Charlie Gregory, and Jack Marshall.

The side proved unable to consolidate in A Section, however, and when it next won a flag in 1952 it was again in B Section. Ivanhoe provided the grand final opposition on that occasion with MHSOB edging home by 10 points, 6.11 (37) to 5.7 (37). Once again the side had difficulty coping with the higher standard of A Section, and indeed by the end of the decade it found itself back in C Section for the first time since before the war. Its stay was brief, however, and in beating Parkside in the 1960 C Section grand final it emphasised its superiority not so much by its margin of victory, which was 35 points, but in amassing 29 scoring shots to 10. The win was a prelude to what might be termed MHSOB’s second ‘golden age’, during which it would come closer than ever before (or indeed since) to claiming the amateur football's elusive ‘Holy Grail’, an A Section flag.

First, though, there was the business of escaping from B Section to attend to, a feat which the side managed, if anything, with even more conviction than it had shown the previous year in C Section. The grand final victim this time around, as in 1952, was Ivanhoe, who troubled the scorers just 9 times in accumulating 4.5 (29), MHSOB meanwhile amassing 12.19 (91).

In 1962 the side made it three grand finals in three seasons, this time in A Section. Unfamiliar and indeed unprecedented as the experience may have been, it was equally so to opposing side Old Paradians, which like MHSOB was playing in its first elite level grand final. Unfortunately for the Old Boys team, however, it proved to be one of those days when nothing quite goes according to plan, and in the end defeat was all the more disappointing for the realisation that the side had failed to do itself justice. Old Paradians pulled away in the end to record quite a convincing victory, winning by 35 points, 16.14 (110) to 9.9 (63).

Four years later the same two opponents played off in A Section once more, but although MHSOB managed to make a closer game of it, in the end the result was the same, Old Paradians winning by 9 points, 12.9 (81) to 11.6 (72).

‘Jocka’ Nelson, who won no fewer than five VAFA competition best and fairest awards, including two Woodrow Medals, was undoubtedly the pick of MHSOB’s powerful early 1960s combinations. Nelson, who captained the triumphant Victorian side at the 1962 AAFC Carnival on home soil, might very easily have been a top VFL player had he been of such a mind. His devotion to the amateur game was consummate, however, and after his playing days were over he continued to give sterling service to the VAFA in a number of off-field capacities.

Only twice since 1966 has a MHSOB side reached the A Section finals: in 1967 (third), and 1970 (fourth). Moreover, over the course of the remainder of the twentieth century the team endured repeated failure in grand finals, losing in B Section in 1999 against Old Trinity Grammarians, in C Section against St Kilda CBOC in 1975 and against St Kilda South Caulfield in 1994, and in D Section in 1979 against Bulleen Templestowe and 1985 versus Old Trinity. If you then add the two losing A Section grand finals of the 1960s you emerge with the sorry picture of 7 straight defeats in the season’s most important game, surely too many to be considered reasonable.

In 2004 MHSOB went some way toward rectifying the matter when it won the third C Section flag in its history courtesy of a resounding 14.12 (96) to 6.11 (47) grand final defeat of Caulfield Grammarians. The side competed in B Section for three seasons before being relegated to C Section following a dismal 2007 showing that yielded just 1 win from 18 matches. The 2008 season was scarcely an improvement with finishing eighth on the ten team ladder, thereby only just avoiding relegation for the second consecutive year. However, the Unicorns then exceeded all expectations in 2009 when they claimed their ninth and most recent senior grade flag courtesy of an 18.18 (126) to 11.17 (83) grand final defeat of Oakleigh Amateurs.

MHSOB remained in Premier C until they succumbed to relegation to Division One, as D Section was now known, in 2011. Another relegation followed in 2014 and the Unicorns have remained in Division Two since. In 2016 they won 8 of their 16 home and away matches to finish fifth of nine clubs while the following year brought finals participation for an eventual finishing position of fourth. In 2018 they finished fifth.

Source

John Devaney - Full Points Publications

 

Footnotes

* Behinds calculated from the 1965 season on.
+ Score at the end of extra time.