Old Xaverians, Balwyn and Frankston YCW lead list of Melbourne’s most successful local footy clubs
THEY’RE the envy of their rivals — the nine clubs in top-flight Melbourne suburban footy competitions which have won at least five flags each since 2000. So who are the best of the best?
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THEY’RE the envy of their rivals and the most successful clubs in suburban football.
Since 2000, nine clubs in top-flight Melbourne metropolitan competitions have won five flags or more.
Some have completed four-peats, while one has even achieved a five-peat of premierships.
We spoke to members of each of the powerhouses to find out what is behind their remarkable efforts on the field.
OLD XAVERIANS
Victorian Amateur Football Association
Premierships: 2000, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2013, 2016
Star players: John Bowen, James McDonald, Matt Handley, Matt Ball, Nick Wynne
What the club says: “Having good people right around the footy club, not just in the senior ranks, has been the key. Setting a good culture and having a good environment — if you get that right success tends to follow. We’ve been lucky and have had a strong footy program through the school. The competition gets stronger every year, but having an enthusiastic, hungry group of players tends to help as well. Amateur footy is predominately about having fun and most people have a hell of a lot more fun when they’re winning.” — president Matt Cosgrave
BALWYN
Eastern Football League/Southern Football League
Premierships: 2000, 2003, 2005, 2008, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016
Star players: Jason Taylor, Martin Beatie, Kieran O’Dwyer, Allan Murray, Rennie Gilchrist, Brad Smith, Ben Cranage
What the club says: “The easy word around that is culture. It is 102 years now, so it’s gone through all the mill of the ups and downs and it’s nearly gone into extinction before. Then it’s had its golden period, which has been the last 20-odd years. Obviously you need to recruit the right players and have a financial sustainability capacity. We’re not an amateur club, so clearly you’ve got to have some financial capacity around it, a business model and you need an environment where players feel they’re coming to a club that can really help them. Our business model has allowed us to help a lot of players find employment, which is the VAFA model. It’s been a remarkable story, but how long it goes for, who knows? We would be the only metropolitan club that has made Division 1 finals for the last 20 years.” — president Richard Wilson
FRANKSTON YCW
Peninsula Football League
Premierships: 2003, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017
Star players: Ashley Eames, Kyle Hutchison, Byron Barry, Anthony Barry, Kevin Lylak
What the club says: “I think there’s no doubt that it comes down to culture and character. YCW has had a strong history of being a club of good character. We’re very much about homegrown, and I think our record speaks for itself when you look at the number of players on our senior list that were YCW juniors. Yes, we’ve recruited players, but our percentage of homegrown is high and we are prepared, and have been prepared, to give our under-19s opportunity. The players that leave us, generally speaking, retire. We don’t lose many players to other clubs. The thing about our group is they’re all quality people. We don’t have any issues with them in regards to behaviour.” — president Michael Lamb
NARRE WARREN
South East Football League
Premierships: 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2013
Star players: Michael Collins, Nick Scanlon, Austinn Jones
What the club says: “We’ve had a really good association with the local junior footy clubs, the Narre Warren juniors and the Narre North Foxes, over the years. The successful coaches have been guys from within Narre Warren and high-quality. Aussie Jones started the run, Matt Shinners coached a couple (of premierships) and then Chris Toner a couple after that. We’ve been fortunate in that way. Kim McGill, who was the president for around nine years, had a very stable administration and grew the club well and had a lot to do with putting in the culture around the club.” — president Stuart Stephenson
HEIDELBERG
Northern Football League
Premierships: 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2016
Star players: Blair Harvey, Dale Nolan, Danny Nolan, Mark Favrin, Chris Hall, Nick Lowther, Daniel Lowther
What the club says: “It’s been a pretty good ride over the last 15 or 16 years and I think we’ve only missed the finals twice over that period. You always start out to put together a pretty good list, but you’ve got to have a lot of people that buy in and everyone said we were the ‘money club’ and this sort of stuff, but we probably were at one stage. We had a great bunch of sponsors and business people that were involved in the club. It’s all right to buy the players, but then they’ve got to jell and make sure they stick there. I think we’ve got nine or 11 players who have won five flags together and then there are another seven or eight who won four together. That means they’ve stayed there for a long time. Through that period we were lucky we had a lot of guys stick around, and they could have got a lot more money if they went elsewhere. It was a great era and something I look back on very fondly.” — former president Trevor Barrett
DEER PARK
Western Region Football League
Premierships: 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017
Star players: Kwame McHarg, Chris Stewart, Jackson Barling, Jack Purton-Smith, James Condos, Brent Guerra, Ryan Houlihan, Bret Thornton, Rodney Van Riet
What the club says: “It all goes back to the people who run your club, I suppose, and we wouldn’t be anywhere near where we are today without our president Mark McGoldrick. He’s been a stalwart for the footy club and someone who had a business plan and a vision and he put that in place when the boys were on the bottom of second division. The best part about our footy club is we create a great platform for people to come and play football. We’ve had a lot of players who have come and gone over the last five years, but the great thing is a lot of them want to come back. It’s always hard to motivate and challenge players and that’s why I think you need to re-energise your list and bring people in and develop kids that are showing that hunger and desire.” — coach Marc Bullen
VERMONT
Eastern Football League
Premierships: 2001, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
Star players: Ryan Mullett, Matt Greig, Mark Cullen, Brad Cullen, Craig Gislingham, Craig Coghlan
What the club says: “On and off the field, you try and create as good a culture as you can. I think we’ve been pretty successful at doing that. The junior program is really important with the (player) points and salary cap now. We’ve got a good, strong junior club that works closely with us and they’re doing a fantastic job with not only all the junior teams we’ve got, but they’re taking the lead role in getting our women’s team established. Very important to have a good relationship with our junior club just to ensure that these young kids are coming through and hopefully quite a lot of them are going to play senior footy.” — president Michael Rennie
WOORI YALLOCK
AFL Yarra Ranges
Premierships: 2003, 2010, 2012, 2013, 2014
Star players: Damian Monkhorst, Danny Ryan, Patrick Sharp, Jordy Williams
What the club says: “With the points system now, it’s crucial that your kids come back. We’ve let them go and luckily a lot of them come back. I suppose our most successful ingredient is that we’ve had very loyal locals, very good junior development and a very good culture, where we’ve always looked after them and kids have come back and, in theory, we’ve dodged the large inflation (of player payments) of the country and metropolitan football world because they’ve come back. That’s what you want and that’s how a football club should work. We’ve never had any highly-paid big-name recruits really — we’ve relied on getting the local kids.” — president Robert Thompson
RIDDELL
Riddell District Football League
Premierships: 2005, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2013
Star players: Peter Robertson, James Climas, James Nolan, James Petran, Jason Allen, Mark Andrew, Nick Ash, Dean Besanko, Matt Darby, Brayden Allen
What the club says: “One of the successes for Riddell over that period has been our appointment of Glenn Elliott as the under-18 coach. He coached them for about 10 years and we had a ready supply of homegrown players. Each year we would have good players coming up through the juniors, and the club was always willing to play those junior players, even though they may not be quite ready. At the moment we have a budget on players and we don’t go over it. We’re well under the salary cap and we try to be pretty frugal with the way we do it. Having ready-made senior players makes it a lot easier than going out and having to chase players and spend really big money. Riddell did that in the early 90s and bought a couple of flags, but then we actually went into recession one year. It nearly killed the club, but we learnt from our mistakes.” — vice president Gerrard Nolan
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