Australian Football

Details of North Geelong’s early history are patchy, but from the early 1920s the picture becomes clearer. At that time, the Magpies competed in the Geelong Junior Football Association. In 1922, they played off for the premiership against Chilwell, but lost by 9 points. Three years later when they again met Chilwell in the decisive match of the season they achieved revenge by precisely the same margin.

North Geelong won a second GJFA flag in 1930, but it was after world war two that the club would experience its greatest successes. The 1946 season saw the formation of the Geelong and District Football League, of which the Magpies were inaugural members. After finishing runners-up to East Geelong in both 1947 and 1948 they embarked on a glittering sequence of seven successive grand final wins, which remains comfortably a competition record.[1]

In the half century or so since the seven-in-a-row era fairly regular successes have continued to come the Magpies' way, and their overall tally of fifteen senior grade G&DFL premierships is unsurpassed. The 2002 triumph was especially memorable as the side edged out flag favourites Corio by the narrowest of margins, having lost to the same opponent two weeks earlier in the second semi final.

North Geelong's most recent flag was attained in 2013. After topping the ladder with a 17-1 record the Magpies suffered a surprise loss to Bell Post Hill in the second semi final before recovering to down East Geelong 17.20 (122) to 13.8 (86) in the following week's preliminary final. In a complete reversal of form North Geelong then turned the tables on the Panthers when it mattered, triumphing on grand final day by 20 points, 17.11 (113) to 13.15 (93).

The 2014 grand final also featured North Geelong and Bell Post Hill but on this occasion the Panthers proved comfortably superior, winning by 54 points, 17.19 (121) to 9.13 (67). A year later Bell Post Hill's grand final supremacy over the Magpies was even more pronounced as they romped to victory by 85 points, 21.23 (149) to 9.10 (64). In 2016 the Magpies dropped to fifth with their season being brought to an ignominious and abrupt end by Thomson in the elimination final, the Tigers winning by 106 points, 17.14 (116) to 1.4 (10). The 2017 season saw this result duplicated as Thomson ousted North Geelong from the flag race at the elimination final stage, albeit by the rather less irksome margin of 38 points. This was followed by a substantial drop in fortunes a year later when only 6 wins from 18 matches were recorded and the Magpies finished well out of the flag race in eighth position.