Australian Football

Devonport

The origins of football in Tasmania’s north west coastal region are uncertain. It is possible that the game was played in mining settlements as long ago as the early 1870s, brought there either directly from the mainland, or by miners who travelled west from Launceston, where Tasmania’s oldest known football club was formed in 1875. By 1881, however, the game was definitely being played both in Latrobe, then the largest town in the area, and Devonport, and June of that year saw the formation of clubs in both settlements.

The Devonport-based club was known as Formby, and was the precursor of the Devonport Football Club of today. On 6th March 1890 the club was formally re-constituted under the name Devonport, and with the exception of the 1900 season, when it went into temporary recess, has been a permanent fixture of the Tasmanian football scene ever since. A major landmark in the development of football in the region came in 1910 with the establishment of the five club North West Football Union[1] which Devonport was to join the following year. The club reached its first premiership deciding match in 1914, downing Latrobe by 32 points, and it repeated this success the following year with a hard fought 2 point win over Ulverstone.

Football went into abeyance owing to the war from 1916 to 1918, and its resumption in 1919 was curtailed throughout Tasmania because of an influenza epidemic. In 1920 and 1921 Devonport fielded a second team, known as ‘Diggers’, which comprised returning servicemen. This second team won the 1921 NWFU premiership with a 7.11 (53) to 4.6 (30) grand final defeat of Latrobe.

Consolidating into a single organisation again in 1922 Devonport initially found the going tough, but in 1924 the side once again played off for the flag, only to succumb by 14 points to Latrobe. The following year finally brought success as Devonport comfortably overcame Ulverstone in the decisive match of the year by 28 points, 11.11 (77) to 6.13 (49).

New club Burnie proved Devonport’s nemesis on each of its next two grand final appearances, in 1927 and 1928, and the following year the entire competition was thrown into disarray when the Forth Bridge, which linked Latrobe and Devonport to the other settlements in the area, washed away. The 1929 season saw Devonport and Latrobe, together with Deloraine and Kentish, form a temporary competition, known as ‘the Central Combine’, which in 1930, after the link was re-established, became the Eastern Division of the NWFU. Dissatisfied with this arrangement, Devonport withdrew from the NWFU the following year, and spent the next three seasons participating in the NWFA, winning a premiership in 1933.

In 1934 Devonport re-entered the NWFU, which had begun to employ a single division format once again. Far from undermining its prowess, its brief stint in an ostensibly inferior competition had obviously been of benefit to the team, which promptly reached the next five grand finals, winning in 1934, 1936 and 1938. Because of the war, the NWFU suspended operations between 1940 and 1944, and on its resumption, and indeed for most of the time prior to its admission to the TFL statewide competition in 1987, Devonport struggled, with its only grand final appearances coming in 1962 (lost to Burnie by 16 points) and 1981 (downed Penguin by 15 points). Despite this, Devonport was home to many highly accomplished footballers, such as Alan Krushka, who won four successive club champion awards from 1959 to 1962, George Bligh, Peter Stuart, Neil Conlan, David Jago, Cec Rheinberger, Kerry Coates, Jim Prentice, 1980 All Australian Ron Stubbs, and Ricky Brown.

The inception of statewide football saw the Blues, as they were known at this time, come into their own at last, after a tentative start. The side failed to qualify for the finals on percentage in its debut season of 1987, but in 1988, coached by Roland Crosby, who had served his coaching apprenticeship in Victoria’s Goulburn Valley competition, Devonport swept all before it. After topping the ladder at the end of the roster matches the Blues comfortably accounted for Glenorchy in the second semi final by 20 points, and were even more convincing against the same opponent a fortnight later, winning 15.7 (97) to 8.6 (54). Crosby’s coaching performance seems all the more meritorious when you consider that he was suffering from a heart ailment at the time, a state of affairs he solicitously refrained from mentioning to his players.

Devonport slumped to eighth place (out of ten) the following year, precipitating a veritable roller coaster ride of achievement mingled with under-achievement over the next twelve seasons. In addition to intermittent finals appearances, the side slumped to wooden spoons in 1993 and 2000, with the latter year in particular proving ignoble in the extreme as not a single win was recorded.

The collapse of statewide football in 2001 saw Devonport revert to a regional competition, in this case the NTFL, but with only 9 wins from 20 matches for the year the club finished eighth (out of twelve), a result it failed to improve on in 2002. In 2003, however, the Magpies as they were by this stage known surged up the ladder to qualify for the finals, while the next year they went within one game - albeit a game in which they were conclusively vanquished by Burnie - of a flag. The 2005 season brought another grand final appearance, and another loss to Burnie, albeit this time by the comparatively more respectable margin of just 17 points. Then, in 2006, hopes that it might be third time lucky were conclusively dashed on grand final day by a much more talented and cohesive Launceston side, which ultimately won with ease by 57 points. The 2007 season brought a marginal decline in fortunes as the Magpies, having topped the ladder prior to the finals, bowed out of flag contention in straight sets after defeats by eventual premiers Launceston in the second semi final, and Ulverstone in the preliminary final. Kurt Heazlewood’s Baldock Medal victory as the competition’s best and fairest player provided a small measure of consolation.

In 2009 Tasmanian football underwent a radical reorganisation which included the establishment of a new statewide competition, the Tasmanian State League (TSL), of which Devonport was one of ten inaugural members. The Magpies reached a grand final in their second season in the competition but Clarence defeated them comfortably, 15.13 (103) to 6.10 (48). Two years later they managed just 1 win all season and not surprisingly plummeted to last place on the ladder. Following that there was slow but steady improvement and in 2016 Devonport qualified for the finals in fifth place but were then heavily beaten in the elimination final by Lauderdale. A year later the progress stalled as the Magpies nosedived down the nine team ladder to eighth place. Then in December it was announced that the club would not be fielding a team in the TSL in 2018 citing an inability to recruit sufficient players of the necessary quality. Instead, the 2018 season saw the Magpies fronting up in the significantly less onerous North West Football League where, somewhat surprisingly, they struggled, winning just three of their 18 roster matches to end up with the wooden spoon. A year later they fared somewhat better, qualifying for the finals in third place before going on to reach the grand final. Opposed by Burnie, they trailed by 31 points at the last change before producing a stirring last quarter comeback which saw them add 4.3 to 0.5 and fall short by just nine points.

In 2020 the NEFL operated on a reduced scale basis and the Magpies did well to qualify for a grand final re-match with Burnie but the end result was the same as in 2019, albeit that the Dockers' margin of victory was greater at 39 points.