Australian Football

Werribee

The Werribee Football Club came into being in 1964 as a result of a merger between four clubs from the Werribee Football League: Irish National Foresters, Metro Farm, Services and Werribee South. The club based itself at Chirnside Park, which had formerly been the joint home ground of Werribee South and the Foresters.

Admitted to the Victorian Football Association’s second division in 1965, that was where the Tigers remained for the next seventeen seasons. Then, in 1982, the VFA decided to re-allocate teams to its two divisions on the basis of ‘potential’, and despite the fact that Werribee had only finished fourth in second division in 1981 the Association believed it had the potential to develop into a leading club. The Tigers were therefore granted promotion to the VFA’s top tier where, perhaps not surprisingly, they struggled to hold their own, and a comparatively undistinguished four season sequence culminated in relegation back to second division. Only after the single division format was reintroduced in 1989 did the team begin to come into its own.

The Tigers’ first grand final appearance came in 1991 when they lost a 9 point thriller to Dandenong. The following year Werribee lifted the Victorian Premiers Cup after annihilating North Ballarat at the MCG, but its finest moment to date came the following year when it downed Port Melbourne 10.10 (70) to 4.4 (28) to earn its first and only VFA flag.

The 1998 season brought another grand final appearance, but Springvale proved too strong.

In the current, fast-changing world of Australian football no club’s future is entirely secure, however, and just a couple of seasons after winning the flag the Tigers almost found themselves ousted from the competition as the VFL sought both to rationalise and to regionalise. Sadly, it seems that nowadays no amount of on field success can guarantee a club’s continued viability. In season 2000 Werribee, along with Williamstown, entered into an arrangement with the Western Bulldogs whereby fit players not selected for AFL duty would be eligible for selection in the VFL. The following year this arrangement was firmed up as far as Werribee and the Bulldogs were concerned, but Williamstown’s involvement ceased. The ‘new’ organisation was almost successful immediately, finishing the home and away season at the top of the ladder only to lose disappointingly to Box Hill in the grand final. Four years later more or less the same thing happened as the Tigers followed a convincing minor premiership victory with a grand final loss to a Sandringham side that had finished 3 wins adrift of them at the conclusion of the home and away rounds.

In 2007 Werribee's alignment with the Western Bulldogs ceased and from the 2008 season the Tigers engaged, along with North Ballarat, in a split affiliation with North Melbourne. This arrangement lasted until the end of the 2015 season when North Ballarat reverted to standalone status leaving Werribee as North Melbourne's sole affiliate. In the first season of the new partnership the Tigers endured a somewhat disappointing time winning just 7 of 18 minor round matches to finish in eleventh place on the fifteen team premiership ladder. The 2017 season was, ostensibly at least, even more disappointing as the Tigers slumped to third from last despite managing the respectable tally of 8 wins from 18 matches. A year later, despite managing 1 fewer win, they rose a couple of places on the premiership ladder.

Whilst there are still no guarantees over future long term survival it appears that, in the twenty-first century, clubs can, in some cases, extend their lives by compromising their identities, as Werribee and a large number of their VFL compatriots have elected, or been forced, to do.