Australian Football

Vermont

Vermont is one of the most consistently successful sporting clubs in Melbourne, but it was not always so. Established in 1920, the club did not manage to acquire a senior grade premiership for thirty-five years. However, since then it has added twenty more, the last nineteen of which have all come in Division One of the Eastern Districts Football League and the competition into which it metamorphosed in 1998, the Eastern Football League. Vermont has spent forty-eight consecutive seasons in Division Oe of this competition, qualifying for no fewer twenty-seven senior grade grand finals. During those forty-eight seasons the club’s senior grade side played a total of 938 matches, winning 666, drawing 8, and losing 264 - a success rate of almost 63%, which by any standards is quite exceptional, and all the more so in so highly competitive a league as the EFL. 

There were few clues as to what lay ahead when the Eagles commenced their involvement in the EDFL. True, they qualified for the finals in their debut season, and again the following year, but there then followed five years of abject mediocrity. Then, in 1969 they broke through for their first Division One premiership, and it could scarcely have been won in more dramatic or memorable a fashion. Trailing Blackburn all day they finally hit the front for the first time with less than twenty seconds remaining when seventeen year old Robert Parks kicked a behind. When the siren went, it was that point which separated the teams, Vermont winning 14.20 (104) to 14.19 (103). The triumph was masterminded by captain-coach John Jenkins, a former VFL player with Richmond and North Melbourne, while ex-Hawthorn star Ian Mort was a major driving force on the field.

Vermont’s victory in the 1969 EDFL Division One grand final was akin to a dam bursting. For the ensuing forty years the club would be consistently at or near the top of the ladder. The 1970 season brought finals qualification in second place, but ultimately the Eagles had to be satisfied with finishing third after they lost both the second semi final against Scoresby and the preliminary final to Mitcham by an identical 3 point margin. A year later, however, they made amends by claiming a second Division One flag with a 15.15 (105) to 13.14 (92) grand final defeat of Mitcham.

Vermont’s next grand final appearance in 1973 ended in defeat against East Burwood, while the club’s 1974 combination finished the home and away rounds at the top of the ladder and was definitely good enough to have won a premiership, but it underperformed in the finals to bow out of contention in 'straight sets'.

The 1980s and 1990s proved to be dream decades for the Eagles who contested the finals every season but one, and capitalised by annexing the premiership a dozen times. They finished runners-up on four occasions. The club’s dominance continued into the new century which has so far seen them qualify for another seven grand finals, for wins in 2001 against East Ringwood by a massive 91 point margin, 2005 against Donvale, 2006 and 2007 against Noble Park, and 2009 at the expense of Croydon. Another useful indicator of the club’s superiority over the past three decades is the fact that its senior grade team has only twice failed to contest the major round since 1987.

Since claiming the 2009 Division One premiership the Eagles have contested four further grand finals at that level, losing to Balwyn in both 2012 and 2016 and to South Croydon in 2017 before turning the tables on South Croydon in 2018.