Australian Football

Old Melburnians

In order to get a clear and meaningful idea of what makes a particular football club tick there is little to be gained by examining the boom times. Rather, it is how a club reacts to adversity that reveals, and indeed to a very large extent determines, its true character.

As one of the oldest and proudest clubs in the Victorian Amateur Football Association, Old Melburnians has achieved much of note, including no fewer than fourteen senior grade premierships. Names like Cordner, Peck, McMullin, Thompson, Rutherford, Rollason and Witts resonate like few others in the amateur game. Moreover, as the club’s foundations are, in a sense, as old as the game itself, Old Melburnians boasts a pedigree that hardly any of its rivals can match.

A couple of games from the end of the 2003 football season, with Old Melburnians facing the apparent near inevitability of relegation to B Section after just one year in the top grade, none of this was of any tangible use whatsoever. In the last two weeks of the season, the club was scheduled to travel to reigning A Section premier St. Bernard’s Old Collegians before playing host to premiers-elect Old Xaverians, and needed to win both matches to guarantee its survival in A Section. The script writers could scarcely have come up with a more demanding schedule if they had been penning an old episode of ‘Mission Impossible’, but Old Melburnians put Messrs. Phelps, Armitage and Collier firmly in the shade by winning both matches superbly. Although the achievements will not be recorded for posterity on any honour boards, they arguably elucidate the club’s essential nature with greater eloquence and lucidity than any lists of patrons, presidents and premierships ever could.

When the Metropolitan Amateur Football Association (MAFA), antecedent of the VAFA, resumed operations following world war one in 1920 Old Melburnians, which comprised former pupils of Melbourne Grammar School, was one of four new clubs to make its debut.

Melbourne Grammar School, which was established in 1858, is without doubt one of Australia’s most noteworthy educational establishments, having nurtured and honed the talents of prime ministers, scientists, diplomats, academics, industrialists and more. From an initial intake of just 77 pupils the school has steadily grown to the point where its annual enrolments exceed 1,000, with its activities spread over three campuses.

From a football perspective, Melbourne Grammar is of enormous, indeed seminal, importance, given that it provided one of the two participating teams for “a grand football match”, commencing on 7th August 1858, and ending, after several sessions of play, almost a month later, which is alleged to have been the direct progenitor of the modern game of Australian football.

Old Melburnians’ inaugural MAFA side was captained by Ernie Atkins who would later serve the VAFA in a number of capacities, including president from 1947 to 1970, and in whose honour the D Section premiership trophy was named.

The 1920s was a decade of rapid growth for the MAFA, which went from a single section comprising eight teams in 1920 to twenty-six teams spread over six sections just six seasons later. During this time, Old Melburnians remained in the top section, finishing in the top four in 1921, 1925 and 1926. It was during the late twenties, however, that the side would first begin to assert itself, contesting three consecutive premiership deciding matches between 1928 and 1930. The first two of these, both against University Blacks, were lost - that of 1928 deservedly, that of the following year almost inexplicably after amassing 31 scoring shots compared to 19 - but in 1930 Old Melburnians boasted one of the finest VAFA sides of the inter-war period, and in the decisive match of the season handed Elsternwick a football lesson in winning by 103 points, 23.16 (154) to 7.9 (51). The team was captained by Jack Cordner, one of many fine footballers from the Cordner family to adorn the amateur game over the years, mainly with either Old Melburnians or University Blacks.

The only thing the great Old Melburnians side of 1930 lacked was staying power. Instead of dominating A Section for several seasons, as might reasonably have been expected, it failed even to contest another premiership decider at that level until after world war two. The team did add a B Section premiership to its haul, however, snatching victory from Coburg in the 1938 grand final by a single straight kick.

The post-world war two period saw the amateur game flourishing as never before, and this time Old Melburnians was at the forefront of developments. The 1950s, in fact, proved to be the club’s most productive decade to date, yielding no fewer than four senior premierships. The first three of these, all in A Section, were won in succession, from 1953 to 1955, with a B Section flag being added in 1959. Among the many fine footballers to contribute to this halcyon phase in the club’s history were key defender Ken ‘Toff’ Rollaston and centreline player Bryce Thomas, both of whom won best and fairest awards at Australian Amateur Football Council interstate carnivals, giant ruckman Peter Cox, centreman and dual premiership skipper Murray Mitchell, and rover Ian Rutherford.

In terms of tangible on field success, the 1960s were as barren as the 1950s had been fertile, with consecutive losing grand finals in A Section in 1960 and 1961 the closest the side came to a premiership. It was to be 1976 before Old Melburnians players again tasted champagne on grand final day, and gratifying as both the achievement and the taste no doubt were, they were tempered, at least to a degree, by the awareness that the reward for success was ‘only’ a berth in B Section.

Two years later, the club was back where its supporters are convinced it belongs, in A Section following a resounding 18.16 (124) to 11.10 (76) B Section grand final win over Old Paradians. Far from being a prelude to a new glory era, it merely presaged a decade of inconsistency during which the only senior grade premierships achieved were in B Section (against Ivanhoe in 1982) and C Section (versus Old Brighton Grammarians in 1988). The former flag win attracted headlines for the wrong reasons after supporters of the two grand final teams engaged in a series of running battles inside the ground.

Old Melburnians’ most recent A Section premiership came in 1994, twelve months after the side had claimed the B Section flag thanks to a 55 point grand final destruction of Therry Corpus Christi Old Boys. The A Section flag proved slightly tougher to win, but the Redlegs displayed a combination of great resourcefulness and grit to end up doubling Collegians’ score in winning by 51 points, 14.18 (102) to 7.19 (51). The side went on to reach the A Section finals three more times during the 1990s, including a losing grand final against Old Xaverians in 1999, but since the turn of the century it has spent as much of its time in B Section as A Section, winning a couple of flags at that level.

The 2006 season was far from the most memorable in the club’s illustrious history as the Redlegs managed just 1 A Section win from 18 matches, a result which inevitably consigned them to relegation. A year later the club’s season went right down to the wire. Needing to defeat AJAX in the final match of the year in order to avoid relegation to C Section, the Redlegs held on in a tight finish to scrape home by a couple of points.

Since then the club’s fortunes have improved considerably, and in 2009 Old Melburnians obtained promotion to Premier section football following an 18.21 (129) to 12.11 (83) defeat of Old Trinity in the  Premier B grand final. The Redlegs' stay at the top was brief, however, as after consolidating in 2010 they managed just 5 wins the following year to slump to relegation. Their stay in Premier B lasted until the end of a 2015 season which saw them reach the grand final via which they obtained promotion to Premier section despite going down by 11 points to St. Kevin's Old Boys. In 2016 Old Melburnians won 8 and drew 1 of their 18 home and away matches to finish in sixth place on the ten team premiership ladder, a result that was precisely duplicated in 2017. The club endured a harder time in 2018 when their 7-11 record saw them only narrowly avoid relegation to Premier B.