Australian Football

The small town of Tongala is located in the heart of Victoria’s dairy country, midway between the somewhat larger settlements of Echuca and Kyabram. The local football club’s achievements belie the town’s diminutive size, however. Indeed, as recently as the 1980s the club won consecutive senior grade premierships in one of Victoria’s strongest, most professionally run competitions, the Goulburn Valley Football League.

Almost from the start, the Tongala Football Club nursed lofty ambitions. For example, on several occasions prior to world war one it applied to join the Goulburn Valley District Football Association (precursor of the GVFL), but each time it was rejected. Undaunted, it carried on as a member of the Kyabram District Junior Football Association until, in 1924, a vacancy was created in the GVFL by the departure of Echuca. This time, Tongala’s application to be admitted as a replacement was accepted, and the club’s first flirtation with what might be called elite level country football began.

Ambitious though the club was, it was also realistic. The costs of fielding a team in the GVFL were significantly higher than in the KDJFA, and in the severe economic climate of the early 1930s this meant that Tongala was, in effect, swimming out of its depth. In 1933 it crossed to the recently formed Echuca Football League, which was of a similar standard to the KDJFA, and in which it was possible to field a competitive team considerably more cheaply than in the GVFL. Tongala spent seven seasons in this new competition, winning premierships in 1937 and 1939, but as the general economic situation gradually improved so the club began to exhibit signs of restlessness once more. When, in 1940, the GVFL experienced something of a membership crisis, owing to the onset of war as well as other factors, Tongala was quick to seize the opportunity to return to the fold. Except for wartime recess, it was to remain a member of the GVFL until 2005.

Hardly anything galvanises an organisation like the perception that it is inferior or disadvantaged in some way compared to its rivals. During its tenure in the GVFL Tongala found itself repeatedly being reminded, in a multiplicity of ways, of its deficiency in terms of resources and revenue when measured against clubs like Shepparton, Shepparton United and Kyabram. However, this only served to inspire the club to keep on breaking the mould and pushing back the boundaries. In 1948, for instance, Tongala became the first GVFL club to hire a former VFL footballer as playing coach when it managed to prise Dave Newman away from Melbourne. Newman, who had also played with Collingwood, had an immense and immediate impact, steering the club to a premiership in only his second season. The fact that the premiership came at the expense of Tongala’s arch local rival, Kyabram, was the proverbial icing on the cake.

The Blues’ second GVFL flag came in 1961 courtesy of a classic David vs. Goliath scenario. The ‘Goliath’ to Tongala’s ‘David’ was a Shepparton side oozing with talent, and coached by former Richmond defender and future VFL ‘super coach’, Tom Hafey. A couple of years later a Shepparton side containing many of the same players as in 1961 would embark on a GVFL record-equalling run of four successive grand final wins, but on none of those occasions would they be confronted by a combination as feisty, resolute and determined as Alex Murphy’s Tongala, whose 11.12 (78) to 9.11 (65) win predictably precipitated “night long celebrations”.

Tongala’s all round excellence as a club during this period was emphasised by its reserve team’s feat in winning premierships in 1953, 1957, 1958 and 1964.

After more than two decades of comparative mediocrity, the Blues returned to the winners’ enclosure with a flourish, winning consecutive flags in 1983 and 1984. Such triumphs afforded fleeting solace to those who still clung to the romantic notion that success in football could be achieved without, or at any rate with only minimal, reliance on the corporate dollar. Unfortunately for Tongala, the ensuing two decades would serve to vanquish such roseate conceptions once and for all. By the turn of the century, the annual costs involved in maintaining and effectively running a club of GVFL standard were equivalent to those associated with a medium sized business, and for Tongala it was becoming increasingly difficult to get the sums to add up. Needless to say, this translated into poor on-field performances, and by the last few seasons of its involvement in the competition the side was being thrashed virtually every week. 

After consecutive winless seasons in 2004 and 2005 Tongala crossed to the Murray Football League, where operating costs are lower, and where it gradually began to rediscover the winning habit. The seniors qualified for the finals for the first time in 2008 and have since proved reasonably competitive in the main although only once, in 2015, have they again made an appearance in the finals. The 2018 season was rather poor by recent standards as the Blues only managed 5 wins from 18 home and away matches to finish thirteenth (of fifteen).