Australian Football

Murchison Toolamba

The small riverside town of Murchison (population 672 at the last official census) has boasted its own football team since 8th May 1879, and there are records of football being played informally in the district even earlier. For the better part of two decades, matches were only sporadically contested, usually against teams from nearby settlements such as Rushworth, Mooroopna and Shepparton. In 1897 the club was one of four founder members of the Upper Goulburn Football Association, and won a premiership at the first time of asking thanks to a 5.9 (39) to 5.7 (37) grand final defeat of Nagambie.

Murchison was a member of the UGFA from 1897 to 1899, and spent the 1900 season in the Goulburn Valley Football Association. However, from 1901 to 1903 it reverted to playing matches only by invitation, one of several clubs in the region that was still doing so at this period. In 1904, a group of these clubs combined to form the short-lived Waranga Football Association, of which Murchison was the inaugural premier. When the Association disbanded at the end of the 1907 season, Murchison crossed to the competition that, with the exception of two extremely brief sojourns elsewhere, was to remain its home for almost half a century, the Goulburn Valley District Football Association, later renamed the Goulburn Valley Football League.

Despite its long involvement in the GVFL, Murchison only managed to win one premiership, at any level, and that arrived quite soon after it joined the competition. During its first couple of seasons in the GVFL the club sometimes struggled to field a full team, but was nevertheless competitive. Then, in 1910, it enjoyed a marvellous year, qualifying for the finals in second place behind Echuca, whom it ultimately thrashed in the challenge final by 62 points, 13.9 (87) to 3.7 (25). Before the premiership celebrations could get into full swing, however, the club was rocked by news that Shepparton had lodged a protest with the Association to the effect that Murchison had fielded an ineligible player when the two clubs had met in the final a week earlier. Murchison vehemently denied this, and the matter became the subject of a prolonged and at times ill-tempered debate at GVDFA level, which was only resolved when Shepparton formally withdrew their protest. 

Murchison’s 1910 premiership combination was led by Gus Kearney, a former VFA footballer with Richmond, but most of the players were locally born and raised. Kearney was succeeded as coach by ex Brunswick and South Melbourne veteran Charles ‘Bones’ Clements.

After reaching another premiership decider in 1912, only to lose to Shepparton, the club elected to join with Avenel, Euroa, Nagambie, Rushworth and Seymour in establishing a new competition the following year. Known as the Waranga North East Football League, it would continue until 1976, but Murchison’s involvement was fleeting. Nevertheless, it did manage to win a premiership thanks to a 7.6 (48) to 4.8 (32) challenge final defeat of Nagambie in 1914, after which the competition went into recess because of the war. When full scale organised football in the region resumed in 1919, Murchison returned to the GVFL, where it showed considerable promise in reaching a grand final in only its second season. Shepparton, however, proved too good on the day.

Murchison’s only other GVFL grand final appearance came in 1930 when it suffered the ultimate indignity, a loss to arch local rivals Rushworth.

During the inter-war years the club’s distinctive green and gold playing uniforms were donned by many top quality players, including some who combined their GVFL careers with stints in the VFL. This was possible because GVFL matches were played on Wednesdays until 1939. Perhaps the most noteworthy footballer to take advantage of this state of affairs was Leo Dwyer, a thoroughbred wingman who played 71 senior games for North Melbourne between 1925 and 1929 and in 1934-5, besides representing Victoria. He also spent time in the VFA with Yarraville, only to incur a lengthy suspension. Unfazed by this, he continued to play with Murchison in the GVFL under an assumed name. Under his own name, in 1936, he became the club’s first and only Morrison Medallist. Leo Dwyer’s son Laurie later followed in his father’s footsteps by carving out an even more illustrious VFL career for himself, also at North Melbourne.

After world war two, Victorian country football gradually became more professional, both in its demands and outlook, and in the GVFL this meant that small clubs like Murchison found it increasingly difficult to compete. In 1964, after several seasons during which both its senior and reserves sides had regularly ended up on the wrong end of substantial hidings, the club ‘jumped ship’ to the slightly lower rated, but by no means less competitive, Kyabram District Football League. In keeping with the trend established every previous time they had commenced in a new competition, the Hoppers promptly won a flag in their debut season, with a second following just two seasons later, and a third in 1982.

Arguably the most noteworthy of the club’s players of recent times was former Melbourne forward Robert Walters who topped the KDFL goal kicking list every year between 1987 and 1990 and kicked in excess of 100 goals twice.

After the turn of the century the Hoppers initially tended to struggle, but they broke through for a fourth senior grade premiership in 2013. Opposed in the grand final by Stanhope they emerged victorious by 31 points, 16.19 (115) to 12.12 (84).

The last five seasons have yielded third (2014), seventh (2015), eighth (2016), seventh (2017) and ninth (2018) place finishes.