Australian Football

Sebastopol

When the Ballarat Football Association, forerunner of today’s Ballarat Football League, was established in 1893 Sebastopol was one of four inaugural member clubs. However, after finishing second in that very first season its performance level declined significantly and it dropped to last in both 1894 and 1895 before withdrawing from the competition in 1896. Sebastopol does not appear to have returned to organised competition until after the first world war when it participated in the Ballarat B Grade competition, which had adopted the name of the Ballarat Football Association with the A Grade competition becoming known as the Ballarat Football League.

Records of the BFA during the 1920s are skimpy, but it is known that Sebastopol was successful in claiming the first and last premierships of the decade. Two further flags followed, in different competitions, during the 1930s. In 1938 Sebastopol fielded a team in the top level competition, the six team BFL, for the first time since 1895 and, after qualifying for the finals in fourth place surprised everyone by overcoming Ballarat North in the first semi final and Ballarat Imperial in the preliminary final to set up a grand final clash with South Ballarat. So good had the Burras form been during their two finals matches that they were expected to give the flag a real shake, but whether because of nerves or fatigue they under performed disappointingly and went down by 57 points.

In 1939 Sebastopol made what, in light of the team’s strong showing the previous year, appears to have been a somewhat strange decision to transfer to the much weaker Clunes District Football League in which they comfortably claimed the second of the two premierships for the decade alluded to above.

With large numbers of players having enlisted in the armed forces many clubs found it hard to keep going in 1940, and mergers became commonplace. One such marriage of convenience involved Sebastopol, which joined forced with its nemesis of 1938, South Ballarat, with the merged team running fourth of five in a curtailed BFL competition involving just eight rounds. At the end of the season the merger was dissolved with South Ballarat going into mothballs and Sebastopol resuming as a standalone club. In what was its last top level season for thirty-seven years the club finished fifth on the six team BFL ladder.

After the war Sebastopol reverted to B Grade football where it enjoyed regular success including five flags on end between 1950 and 1954. In 1978 the club returned to the BFL in somewhat controversial circumstances on the direction of the VCFL Investigation Committee. After struggling initially the Burras qualified for the finals in 1980, thrashing Ballarat by 66 points in the elimination final before losing narrowly to Maryborough in the first semi final.

Although Sebastopol has yet to achieve a senior grade BFL premiership victory it has made a unique and telling contribution to the competition. The seniors have regularly contested the finals and twice, in 1985 against North Ballarat and 2000 against Melton, played off in the grand final. The club’s other grades have also performed well, with both the under eighteens and under sixteens claiming flags. Recent seasons have been something of a struggle, however, with the senior grade team slumping to wooden spoons in 2009, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2017. The 2018 season brought considerable improvement with the side winning 8 out of n16 matches to finish in seventh, just one place adrift of finals qualification.