Australian Football

Unravelling the precise origins of today’s Millicent Football Club is a somewhat tortuous task, but what can confidently be asserted is that football of a sort was being played either in the town or its environs as early as 1874. The phrase “of a sort” should require little in the way of explanation as uniformity in rules was still some way from being established. That said, given that the Melbourne style game is recorded as having first been played in Mount Gambier some time in the late 1860s it seems quite reasonable to suppose that the men of nearby Millicent felt constrained, if not quite obliged, to follow suit.

Playing football is one thing, but doing so on an organised, regular basis is quite another, and it was not until June 1894 that a formally constituted Millicent Football Club came into being. Even then, arrangements appear to have been somewhat haphazard, with the club intermittently flitting in and out of existence for the better part of a decade. However, by 1906 the game was sufficiently well entrenched in the locality for a grand challenge match to be arranged between a team representative of the whole Millicent District, and leading SAFA club Port Adelaide. The visitors won the match with ease, but given that the following year saw the establishment of a Millicent Football Association it seems logical to infer that the result did nothing to undermine the locals’ enthusiasm for the game. 

The MFA initially comprised three teams, expanding to four in 1909. Two of these teams were based in Millicent itself, and two in the outlying areas. In 1912 the competition was reorganised under the banner of the Millicent District Football Association, with the two Millicent teams combining forces and being joined by two new clubs, Mount McIntyre and Tantanoola. This was to be but a short-lived arrangement, however, thanks to the intervention of war. When organised football in the region resumed in 1920 three Millicent-based teams plus Tantanoola collectively comprised a new competition, the Drainage Areas Football Association.

The early 1920s was a time of optimism and expansion for Australian football virtually everywhere it was played. In south east South Australia this process was consolidated in 1927 with the establishment of a new, overarching competition, the South East Football Association, of which a unified Millicent club was one of four foundation members. Millicent’s involvement in this competition lasted until 1936, and saw it achieve premiership success three times.

The 1936 season saw another series of changes in the way football was organised in the south east. As far as Millicent was concerned, chief among these was the formation of a new, more localised competition, the Mid South East Football Association, which was home to five clubs, Glencoe, Kalangadoo, Tantanoola, plus two Millicent-based teams, Central and Rovers. By the time the competition went into recess because of world war two, it boasted an unwieldy nine clubs, a situation that was rectified when the league resumed in 1946 by Central and Rovers merging to produce the club which continues to represent the town of Millicent to this day.

The teams fielded by Millicent during the decade and a half immediately following the end of the war were arguably its strongest ever. Having gone top on debut in 1946 the club ambitiously sought, and was granted, a transfer to the rather stronger Mount Gambier and District Football Association which, in 1951, acknowledged its widening remit by altering its name to the South East and Border Football League. Millicent reached the grand final that same season, only to suffer the agony of a 1 point loss to South Gambier. Further grand final appearances followed in 1955, against North Gambier, and 1956, against Penola, both of which were won. A losing grand final clash with North Gambier in 1960 rounded off the most successful phase in Millicent’s history.

In 1964, the SEBFL combined with Victoria’s Western District Football League to form the Western Border Football League, a name which palpably (one might say arrogantly) ignored the fact that half the clubs in the competition hailed from South Australia, where the border in question lay to the east. In terms of catchment area, Millicent was - and remains - indisputably one of the WBFL’s smallest clubs, but almost without exception it has acquitted itself creditably, although only once, in 1984, has it been successful in claiming a premiership. Known as the Saints since 1965, and boasting the same colours as AFL club St Kilda, Millicent has also been a losing grand finalist three times, in 1983, 1988 and 2010. 

In 2006 the Saints had a disappointing season which saw them manage just 6 wins from 18 matches, only good enough for seventh place in what since 1995 had been a ten team competition. A year later their decline continued as they dropped one rung on the premiership ladder after winning just 5 games for the season. There was marginal improvement in 2008 as the Saints more or less duplicated their 2006 record, finishing seventh with half a dozen victories from 17 games. This was followed by 8 wins in 2009 for sixth place. The 2010 season proved to be one of the most memorable in the Saints' history as they qualified for the grand final only to fall short by 3 points at the hands of West Gambier. The hangover from this loss endured for some time as, between 2011 and 2017, the Saints only twice contested the finals since besides ending up on the wrong end of numerous hefty defeats. Finally, in 2018 the Saints' long premiership drought was brought to an end as they scored a gut wrenching, heart stopping 4 point grand final win over East Gambier. Earlier, Millicent had qualified for the finals in second place, behind minor premiers Casterton Sandford on percentage. The two teams faced off in the second semi final with the Saints coasting home by 28 points to set up the aforementioned grand final clash with East Gambier which gave rise to arguably the greatest achievement in Millicent's seventy-two years of existence.