Australian Football

Whitefriars

Since its inception in 1986 Whitefriars Old Collegians Football Club has made noteworthy progress. Admitted to the VAFA’s F Section that same year the team improved steadily over several seasons, qualifying for the finals for the first time in 1986, and reaching its first grand final the following year. By making it to the decisive match of the season Whitefriars earned promotion to E Section, but the pleasure which this achievement generated would have been considerably sullied by the team’s heartbreakingly narrow failure to capture its first flag. In a match in which there was almost literally nothing between the teams in terms of endeavour, skill and mental toughness, the scoreboard showed Aquinas Old Collegians holding a 1 point advantage when it mattered most, at the final siren.

The 1988 season brought the club’s first senior premiership thanks to a 6.14 (50) to 6.8 (44) E Section grand final win over Power House. The side was competitive from the start in D Section, finishing third in its first season before securing promotion in 1990 after a 21 point grand final loss to State Bank. That the team was now genuinely ‘on a roll’ was emphasised by its feat in annexing a C Section premiership in 1991 and then running fourth in B Section the following year. After so much spectacular progress in so short a time it was perhaps inevitable that there would be a hangover of sorts. During the mid-nineties the side endured a succession of poor seasons which saw it plummet rapidly back to D Section. Recovery, however, was quick, and every bit as spectacular as the side’s initial ascent through the grades had been.

The 1997 season saw Whitefriars narrowly failing to achieve promotion back to C Section when they bowed out of contention in D Section at the preliminary final stage. This proved to be just a temporary hiccup, however. In 1998, the side convincingly beat Southbank in the D Section grand final, and followed this up the next season with its second C Section flag.  Whitefriars’ most recent senior premiership was also achieved in C Section thanks to a highly impressive 20.14 (134) to 13.15 (93) grand final victory over St Bede’s Mentone Tigers in 2002. The next season was arguably the most noteworthy in the club’s history to date as the seniors procured promotion to A Section for the first, and so far only, time, albeit only as losing grand finalists. Since 2003 Whitefriars on-field fortunes have dipped somewhat with the senior side mainly lining up in Division One (the equivalent of the old D1 Section). They qualified for the finals in 2011 and 2012 but subsequently struggled. In 2016 they managed just 6 wins from 18 matches to finish seventh out of ten teams while the 2017 season brought relegation to Division Two after they only won a couple of games all year. After that there was considerable improvement over the course of a 2018 season which brought Division Two finals qualification and an ultimate finishing position of third.