Australian Football

The Tigers were formed in 2000 when Victoria Park South Perth merged with Canning. Both clubs had, prior to that, competed in the Sunday Football League (SuFL), with South Perth having joined forces with Victoria Park Junior Football Club in 1997. Initially, the Tigers were known, with ponderous predictability, as Canning Victoria Park South Park.

Canning Football Club was originally established in 1922, and participated in a number of competitions prior to the formation of the SuFL in 1984, when it was one of sixteen founder members. The club’s 1994 SuFL premiership was its nineteenth all told at senior grade level.

South Perth also enjoyed a long and intermittently illustrious history. Formed in 1931, it was a member of the Western Australian Amateur Football League from then until 1966, winning senior premierships in 1947, 1952 and 1953. The 1967 season saw the club commence a four year association with the South Suburban Murray Football League before crossing to the Western Australian Football Association where it contested five senior grand finals in thirteen years for one flag. Like Canning, South Perth was a founder member of the SuFL, but the closest it got to winning a premiership was third place in 1986.

The Tigers’ seniors did not perform with any real distinction during their time in the SuFL which came to an end after the 2008 season, when rationalisation of the state’s metropolitan grass roots football led to the competition disappearing. (The reserves, by contrast, did the club proud, claiming a premiership in 2006.) From 2009 Canning Victoria Park South Park began competing in the Western Australian Amateur Football League. They won a D Grade premiership in only their second season in the competition and have continued to perform competitively since, at one point getting as high as C1 Grade. In 2016, known now simply as Canning South Perth, they qualified for the C2 Grade finals and ultimately finished fourth. A year later they suffered a decline in fortunes, winning just 5 out of 18 matches to finish eighth of 10 teams before improving slightly during a 2018 season which brought half a dozen wins and a rise of one place on the premiership ladder.

The 2019 season brought the immense disappointment of relegation to C3 Grade after the side finished second from last. A season of consolidation followed as the Tigers qualified for the C3 finals and ultimately finished fourth.