Australian Football

UHS-VU

University High School Old Boys Football Club was formed towards the end of 1931, and admitted the following year to the Metropolitan Amateur Football Association, forerunner of today’s Victorian Amateur Football Association. Initially placed in D Section, the team struggled at first, and ended its debut season in last place. After that, improvement was quite rapid, with fourth place in 1933 being followed by a runners-up spot, and promotion to C Section, the next year.

UHSOB’s conqueror in the 1934 premiership decider was Ivanhoe, and twelve months later, in the C Section grand final, the ‘Hoes again triumphed, albeit by a much smaller margin, 46 points as compared to 99. Despite the grand final losses, UHSOB’s achievement in progressing from D Section to B Section within five years of the club’s inception was highly creditable, the more so when you consider that it boasted fewer than fifty paid up members at this time. Having such a small membership must have made raising the necessary funds to keep the club afloat extremely difficult, especially during such a tough time economically as the 1930s. 

This state of affairs was not helped by the VAFA’s Draconian attitude to non-compliance with its ever expanding catalogue of rules and regulations, the overriding slant of which might adequately be summarised by the expression “fine first, ask questions later”. Moreover, if the VAFA considered a matter sufficiently serious, it reserved the right to suspend a club “at its pleasure”, or even expel it permanently. 

In 1936 UHSOB ran foul of a VAFA regulation of which it may not even have been aware when it failed to send a representative to three successive meetings of the Association. It was promptly - if, thankfully, only very briefly - outed from the competition - the equivalent, one might argue, of a child being told to “go and stand in the corner and think about you have done”.

Having reached B Section, UHSOB’s upward progress stalled. Then, in 1940, any further aspirations the club may have nursed had to be shelved owing to the war.

Once the war was over, UHSOB experienced greater difficulty than many clubs in picking up the pieces, and by the time it was ready to resume in 1948 the VAFA had already been underway for two years, albeit only as a three section competition as opposed to the four which had been in operation during the 1930s In 1948, the Association reintroduced its D Section which was where, because of its presumably unavoidable tardiness in resuming, UHSOB found itself.

Disheartening as it must have been to be forced to start once again from scratch, UHSOB applied itself to the task with great gusto and determination, at least initially. The side reached the D Section finals in 1950 and 1951, finishing third both years, but then endured four seasons of mediocrity. The breakthrough finally came in 1956 when it battled its way through to a grand final clash with Old Geelong Grammarians. This, unfortunately, was lost, but the club’s primary aim of promotion to C Section had been achieved.

The team was competitive from the start in C Section, and achieved promotion at the third time of asking after yet another losing grand final, this time against Power House. However, the foundations of the club’s first premiership, as well as arguably its greatest ever team, had very definitely been laid. In 1960 UHSOB, coached by George Murray, and with Alan Masters as captain, proved itself the team to beat in B Section right form the outset, and ultimately finished comfortably at the head of the ladder. In the second semi final the challenge of De La Salle Old Collegians was almost contemptuously brushed aside, UHSOB winning 15.17 (107) to 6.13 (49), and two weeks later the superiority of the men in green, brown and white was rubber-stamped against the same opposition, albeit by the somewhat narrower margin of 27 points. The significance of this particular team in the context of the overall history of the club was affirmed in 2002 when no fewer than half a dozen of its participants, plus the coach, were named in the official UHSOB ‘Champion Team 1948 to 2002’.

UHSOB had two brief stints in A Section during the 1960s, the second of which was procured in 1963 after yet another losing grand final, this time by 14 points against an emerging power in Coburg. The club boasted many fine players during this era, including 1965 AAFC All Australian Terry Lillis, Ray Johnston, who went on to play league football with North Melbourne, Phil Ashmead, who did likewise with Central District, Col Kinnear, who coached Sydney from 1989 to 1991, Laurie Prosser and Ian Kerr.

UHSOB ushered in the new decade in the best way possible by winning the 1970 C Section flag. Captain-coached by Col Kinnear, the side boasted an abundance of talent, with pride of place perhaps going to Ashmead, who won both the club best and fairest and best player in the finals awards. Meanwhile, Geoff ‘Woofer’ Davis, who snared his 100th major of the year in the grand final, topped the C Section goal kicking list, while the coach, despite a “dodgy” knee, produced some sterling work on the field to complement his strategic insights. Opposed in the grand final by Old Carey Grammarians, UHSOB struggled for three quarters to break clear before unleashing a stunning, 8 goal last quarter burst that produced a deceptively lop-sided scoreline of 15.10 (100) to 8.11 (49).

Unfortunately, the club’s bright start to the 1970s was not a precursor to a triumphant decade. Following a ‘liberalisation’ of the sports policy at UHS there were discernibly fewer potential players to be gleaned from what, up to now, had been the club’s major recruitment source. By the 1980s the situation had become critical, with the senior grade side having plummeted to F Section, which since 1971 had been the VAFA’s basement tier. The primary focus of player recruitment had become much less a matter of attempting to assemble a premiership combination than merely - and often, somewhat desperately - trying to recruit sufficient players to enable the club to fulfil its weekly fixtures.

Affairs took a sudden and dramatic turn for the better with the appointment as captain-coach in 1983 of former Brunswick player, Ken Laker. An enormously influential figure both on and off the field, Laker revitalised a team that had lost both direction and purpose, and the end result was promotion to E Section - something that twelve months earlier would have been almost impossible to imagine.

The ‘83 finals series would have left observers swooning all summer long had it occurred in the VFL. As it was, only a highly select band of individuals got to witness UHSOB’s 6 point victory over Commonwealth Bank in the first semi, the 18 point triumph over Old Geelong Grammarians a fortnight later in the preliminary final, and the marathon grand final which ended with just 3 points separating the sides after more than four hours of football.

Pitted against Footscray Technical School Old Boys in that grand final, UHSOB came from ‘nowhere’ at half time to get up and tie the match, 10.10 (70) apiece. Amazingly, it was the first time in history that a VAFA grand final had ended all square.

In the following week’s replay things were almost as close. With only a couple of minutes left on the clock, the scoreboard showed UHSOB 3 points to the good, 12.7 (79) to 11.10 (76). However, in the desperate closing stages, Footscray TCOB managed to snatch what proved to be the final score of the match, a goal, leaving UHSOB with nothing but the heartfelt admiration of a handful of onlookers - plus, of course, the highly welcome ‘pill-sweetener’ of promotion to E Section.

Exhilarating as the team’s achievements in 1983 (and 1986, when promotion from F Section was again attained) were, they could not mask, in the longer term, the very real player recruitment difficulties the club faced. The remainder of the 1980s, and the entire 1990s, were almost unremittingly dire, with not even an occasional finals appearance to lighten the gloom.

In 2002 the club committee took a brave decision, and one that was almost immediately vindicated, when it entered into an alliance with Victoria University, as a result of which the club was renamed University High School Old Boys-Victoria University (UHS-VU for short). With playing ranks discernibly bolstered, in 2003 the senior side set about qualifying for the finals for the first time in almost two decades. It did this in highly memorable fashion, winning its last 8 home and away matches on end, before marching to the D4 Section grand final with wins over Albert Park in the qualifying final and Mount Lilydale in the second semi. In order to procure the third senior grade flag in its history UHS-VU would need to win its eleventh straight match, something that appeared unlikely at three quarter time of a tense, low scoring affair with Mount Lilydale holding an 11 point advantage. In the last term, however, the Vultures unleashed a brand of attacking football completely at odds with all that had gone before, and ended up pulling away to a comfortable 27 point victory. Spoiling what would otherwise have been a near perfect day, in the reserves grand final, North Brunswick held off a strong finish from UHS-VU to snatch victory by 6 points.

The Vultures reached the finals in D3 Section in 2004, and held their own the following year, before a disappointing 2006 season threw a spanner into the works in the form of relegation back to D4 Section. This only proved to be a temporary setback, however, as in 2007 the Vultures carried all before them, culminating in an emphatic 18.9 (117) to 12.12 (84) D4 grand final defeat of Eltham, the team which, in round four, had inflicted their sole defeat for the season. 

Subsequent seasons saw the Vultures competing mainly  in Division Three. They have been regular finalists, and in 2017 made it through to the grand final in which they fended off the challenge of Power House, triumphing by 21 points, 13.14 (92) to 9.17 (71). Confronted by the much sterner challenge of Division Two football the Vultures rose to the task superbly, winning 17 out of 18 home and away matches before cruising to the flag on the strength of comfortable victories over Old Paradians in both the second semi final (by 16 points) and grand final (by 55 points).

Fortunes in amateur football can change remarkably quickly, and everyone associated with UHS-VU will be hopeful that the club will soon embark on the first step of an ascent back to a level more in keeping with its status as one of the VAFA’s longest serving members.