Australian Football

Northcote Park

After winning the Diamond Valley Football League Division Two premiership in 1994, thereby gaining promotion to Division One, Northcote Park swiftly developed into one of the competition’s leading clubs. Its feat of capturing four successive Division One flags between 1999 and 2002 was, at the time, a DVFL record.

Originally known as Prince of Wales, after the second world war the club fielded a team in the Methodist Football Association in which it was successful in claiming five consecutive premierships between 1947 and 1951. Wanting to test itself at a higher level the club moved to the Metropolitan Football League in 1952 at which point it also altered its name to Northcote Park. The club’s sole MFL flag was obtained in 1957.

Between 1973 to 1980 the Cougars competed in the Panton Hill Football League, winning a hat trick of flags between 1977 and 1979. The 1981 season brought a switch to the Diamond Valley Football League’s newly-formed Division Two competition. After initially finding the standard testing the Cougars broke through for a premiership in 1985, thereby achieving promotion to Division One. The club’s initial Division One sojourn lasted just one season but since obtaining promotion for the second time in 1994 Northcote Park has been a permanent feature of the Division One scene, both in the DVFL, and the competition which in 2007 supplanted it, the Northern Football League.

The Cougars' most recent senior grade premiership was procured in 2012 in Division One of the NFL. Opposed in the grand final by perennial power club Heidelberg Northcote Park won at a canter by 45 points, 17.12 (114) to 9.15 (69). Since then the Cougars have qualified for the finals in 2013, for a third place finish, 2015 (fourth), 2016 (fifth) and 2017 (third). In 2018 they missed out on finals participation when they tumbled down the ten team premiership ladder to eighth.