Australian Football

The Simpson Football Club was established in February 1965, and a few weeks later it affiliated with the Purnim and District Football League. The seniors did not manage to win a game in their first season, but progress was swift thereafter. In 1969 they contested their first grand final, but went down by 20 points to Timboon. The 1970 season brought revenge, and a first ever senior grade premiership, as Simpson overcame the grand final challenge of their previous season's conquerors by 8 points. The triumph was a prelude to a decade of success, spawning another three premierships from a total of half a dozen grand final appearances. 

The 1980s proved similarly productive as the Tigers contested the ultimate match of the season on six occasions for three wins. Even better was to follow as both seniors and reserves procured unbeaten premierships in 1991, with the seniors eventually going on to make it a club record three flags in succession. At the end of the 2002 season the Heytesbury Mount Noorat Football League, with which Simpson was affiliated, disbanded, and the club sought, and was granted, admission to the Colac and District Football League for 2003. It would probably be fair to describe the C&DFL as being a somewhat more demanding competition than the HMNFL, and understandably the Tigers took time to adjust. However, adjust they did, and in 2005 the seniors reached their first finals series, accounting for Otway Districts by 2 points in the elimination final before going down by 40 points to Alvie in the following week’s first semi final. The reserves meanwhile did even better, losing just 1 match - the second semi final - all year en route to the club’s first CDFL flag.

After a number of lack lustre seasons the Tigers returned to the finals arena in 2010 when they finished fourth. They missed the finals in 2011, 2012 and 2013. In 2014 they qualified for their first C&DFL grand final and swept to the flag in emphatic fashion with a 21.13 (139) to 5.6 (36) defeat of Birregurra. A year later they were even more impressive in winning all 16 home and away matches followed by comfortable wins over South Colac (12.14 to 8.8) in the second semi final and Irrewarra Beeac (12.10 to 8.11) in the premiership decider.

In 2016 the Tigers performed strongly to get as far as a preliminary final defeat at the hands of South Colac suggesting that there might well be more premierships in the pipeline for a club which was giving every impression of having found its feet. However, in this context the 2017 season, which saw the Tigers bow out of the flag race at the elimination final stage, had to be seen as something of a disappointment, as did the following season which ended in the same manner.