Australian Football

St. Mary's Salesians

St. Mary’s Football Club and Salesian Old Collegians merged in time for the 2008 Victorian Amateur Football Association season. Initially, the club replaced Salesian Old Collegians in Division Two, but it was immediately relegated. The following year saw a significant recovery as St. Mary's Salesians earned promotion after contesting the Division Three grand final, albeit that this was lost. Opposed in the grand final by Bentleigh they fell short by 23 points.

After consolidating in Division Two for several seasons the Saints again achieved promotion as runners-up in 2014, this time losing in the grand final to Kew by 11 points. They have remained in Division One since, finishing fourth (of ten) in 2015, fifth (also of ten) a year later before making it as far as the grand final in 2017. Going into the match as favourites they led opponents PEGs 8.2 (50) to 0.1 at the first change and by 35 points at the main interval but thereafter were overrun, adding just 3 goals to 10 over the remainder of the match to end up losing by 13 points. They will derive a modicum of consolation from having achieved promotion to Premier C, but throwing away such a handsome advantage in the most important match of the year must have been galling in the extreme. More disappointment was to follow as in 2018 the Saints managed just a solitary win all season in succumbing to the wooden spoon and with it demotion back to Division One.

Prior to the merger St. Mary's competed in the VAFA between 1990 and 2007 and before that in the Eastern Suburban Churches Football Association beginning in 1932. The club won F Section premierships in both 1990 and 1993 and all told won a total of nine senior grade flags. Meanwhile Salesian Old Collegians had existed for almost forty years during which time a couple of senior grade premierships were attained the most recent of which came in the VAFA's E South Section in 1996 courtesy of a 10.17 (77) to 10.2 (62) grand final defeat of Power House.