Australian Football

Currently one of the NWFL’s strongest and most consistently successful clubs, Ulverstone has a proud and illustrious history dating back to 1888. Originally known as the Leven Football Club, it changed its name to Ulverstone in 1890. The early years of the club are not particularly well documented, but it is known that Ulverstone competed in a variety of different Leagues and Associations, notably the North West Football Association between 1894 and 1908 where it was successful in winning three premierships.

North west coastal football during the early years of the twentieth century could be more than a little tempestuous. A game between Ulverstone and Mersey at Ulverstone on 18th July 1908 was a case in point. The match was rugged and ill tempered throughout, but things finally got totally out of hand midway through the final quarter. With Mersey leading by 21 points a flare up occurred after Ulverstone’s Albert ‘Nipper’ Devlin was felled by his opponent, Gibbens. Players from both sides rapidly converged on the scene, and random pushing and jostling soon escalated into an all out brawl. When angry spectators began tearing up pickets from the boundary fence and running to join in the fray it was clear that a full scale riot was in danger of developing, and the five policemen on duty at the ground raced to intervene. However, despite the best efforts of both the police and the umpire the crowd could not be cleared from the oval, and the umpire was left with no option but to abandon the game.

Afterwards, as the train carrying the Mersey players and supporters departed Ulverstone station it was pelted with stones by an angry mob. At the ensuing Association tribunal, four Ulverstone players ended up receiving bans ranging from two months to life, while a fifth player was fined ten shillings in court. However, the disqualified quartet were all able to return to the field in 1909 as Ulverstone, along with Penguin and Latrobe, broke away from the NWFA to form a new competition, the North West Football League,[1] which gave way a year later to the NWFU.

Ulverstone was joined in the NWFU for its inaugural year by its two former NWFL compatriots, plus Mersey and Wesley Vale from the NWFA.[2] In the grand final that year it had the satisfaction of overcoming bitter rivals Mersey by 23 points, 8.13 (61) to 5.8 (38). Two further grand final appearances, both of which were lost, followed before football went into recess in 1916 because of world war one.

Ulverstone enjoyed modest success in the 1920s, ’30s and ‘40s with sporadic grand final appearances and a single flag in each decade. The team really came into its own during the 1950s, however, when players like Graham ‘Chum’ Saltmarsh, Arthur Hodgson, G.B. ‘Paddy’ Martin, Joe and Len Pearce, Jack Rough and Merv Smith helped steer it to seven grand finals in eight years between 1950 and 1957 for a total of six flags. With the irrepressible Arthur Hodgson to the fore both on and off the field (as coach) the side also won its first state premiership in 1955 after wins over TFL premier New Town and Longford from the NTFA.[3] The strength of NWFU football at this time is further exemplified by the combined team’s success in 1955 in winning the Tasmanian intra-state championship for the third consecutive time. Needless to say, many Ulverstone players made prominent contributions to this achievement. After the lucrative excitement of the 1950s the following decade proved to be a barren time for the Robins despite their playing off on grand final day no fewer than five times. The 1970s were similarly unprofitable with the exception of a stellar 1976 season which saw the club win both the NWFU and state premierships. In the local grand final, steadiness in front of goal helped procure a 32 point victory over Penguin, while in the state grand final the Robins proved too strong for Launceston at York Park having earlier thrashed TFL premier Sandy Bay in the preliminary final by almost 12 goals. Sadly for Ulverstone, victory in the state premiership was no longer a passport to national exposure via the Australian club championships in Adelaide as, in 1976, that competition had been superseded by the NFL-Wills Cup, featuring teams from Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia only. In a small way, Tasmania’s ostracism from what, until now, had been a more or less guaranteed position of centrality and importance in the Australian football universe had begun.

The structure of Tasmanian football, too, was changing. The state premiership was contested for the last time in 1978, with the intra-state premiership likewise disappearing the following year. In 1980 Tasmania’s twenty-one top level senior clubs joined together to compete in a knock-out series sponsored by a cigarette company. The series was not a financial success, but it was patently clear to most observers that Tasmanian football was being nudged (some would say forced) in the direction of statewide competition.

Ulverstone won its twelfth NWFU premiership in 1986 with a 9.10 (64) to 7.7 (49) grand final defeat of Smithton. This proved to be the last ever NWFU grand final, as the following season saw the establishment of a new competition, the Northern Tasmanian Football League. Formed in the wake of the defection to the newly created TFL statewide competition of NWFU sides Burnie and Devonport in 1987, following North Launceston‘s and South Launceston‘s departure from the NTFA the previous year,[4] the NTFL comprised the remaining former NTFA and NWFU clubs. As far as Ulverstone was concerned, however, it was business as usual, with a 13.19 (97) to 12.12 (84) grand final victory over East Devonport procuring the club’s second successive flag.

Since then, the Robins have gone on to become by some measure the league’s most successful club, winning a further premiership in 1990 followed by a spectacular five in a row between 1993 and 1997 and then, for good measure, an eighth NTFL flag in 2000. The arrival in the competition in 2001 of former statewide heavyweights in the shape of Burnie Dockers and North Launceston made life harder for Ulverstone, but the side continued to perform creditably, and in 2007 got as far as the grand final, in which it lost narrowly to Launceston. In 2009 the league saw a reduction in both size and standard of play following the defection of the stronger clubs to compete in a new statewide competition. Ulverstone seized the moment magnificently, emphatically downing Smithton in both the second semi final and grand final to earn their ninth NTFL/NWFL premiership, which by some measure constituted a record. 

Since claiming the 2009 flag the Robins have continued to perform creditably, and in 2010, 2013 and 2015 they reached the grand final only to lose, before carrying off their tenth competition flag in 2017 as a result of an 11.10 (76) to 7.10 (52) grand final defeat of Latrobe. Another grand final appearance followed in 2018 but Burnie proved to have the Robins' measure and won by 16 points.

Irrespective of what the future brings, the Ulverstone Football Club has a history and a tradition of which to be proud, a fact exemplified by the its refusal to follow the lead of so many other clubs in supposedly ‘low tier’ leagues throughout Australia and subordinate its own identity to that of one of the AFL ‘superpowers’. Its players may take to the field in playing uniforms similar to those of Essendon, but they are categorically not Bombers, they are Robins, proud of the unique tradition they perpetuate, and honoured to be representing one of Tasmanian football’s truly great clubs.