Coburg legend Phil Cleary on his life as a footballing Lion

Phil Cleary’s name is synonymous with the Coburg Football Club. This is his take on more than four decades of footy at Coburg City Oval as he urges fans to back the club’s membership drive.

The football landscape has changed profoundly since I played my first game at Coburg 44 years ago, but I couldn’t imagine life without the Coburg Lions.

I’ll never forget the trainer in 1975 rubbing my arm and declaring, “no problem it’s just a bruise” as the ash on his roll-your-own cigarette teetered above it.

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The ‘bruise’ was a broken arm that required a steel plate.

That was my initiation into the rollicking VFA of the 1970s.

Cleary at Coburg training in 1986

The pain however was swept aside when I banged through seven goals against Dandenong a year later to the raptures of a vociferous crowd at Coburg.

Two years later, in 1979, we snatched a thrilling premiership in the dying minutes in front of 20,000 people, our first Division One flag in 51 years.

Cleary took up broadcasting and boundary riding on ABC’s VFL coverage after his time at Coburg.

These were heady days when VFA football was a suburban ritual. No game was bigger in my time than when the theatrical Mark Jackson arrived at Coburg in 1986 wearing the colours of the local enemy, Brunswick.

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As former president Ian Liversidge told me, “We had to open extra gates to get everyone in, took more money that day than for the whole season, and ran out of food and beer.”

Prime Minister Bob Hawke celebrates the 1988 premiership win with Phil Cleary. Picture: Genevieve Edwards.

How could I have imagined, holding the premiership cup with Prime Minister Bob Hawke in the Windy Hill rooms in 1989 after we went back-to-back against Williamstown, that 30 years later we’d be calling on the people of Moreland to stand by their club?

I’m imploring every person who has ever been to a Coburg game or has shared memories with me to buy a membership ticket so that the dreams of yesteryear are replicated in 2019 and beyond on the beautiful and historic Coburg City Oval.

Phil Cleary played 205 games for Coburg and was named coach of its Team of the Century. He is a broadcaster and author and was the Federal Member for Wills from 1992-1996.