Bendigo: Kyneton shows how a club can return from season in recess
Corowa-Rutherglen can draw inspiration from Kyneton, which went into recess in 2013 before bouncing back. Here’s how it happened.
A driving force behind Kyneton Football Club’s recovery from a brush with extinction is urging the Corowa-Rutherglen community to rally and save its team.
Kyneton’s senior team spent the 2013 Bendigo league season in recess before rebounding 12 months later to become one of the competition’s strongest clubs.
After growing up in another country town, Hamilton, he was well aware of the importance of having a vibrant football-netball club.
Mr Waters joined and eventually spearheaded a new group of like-minded people hellbent on ensuring Kyneton remained in existence.
The decision for the senior team to go into recess took place in the lead-up to the 2013 season.
Importantly, opposition clubs allowed Kyneton’s reserves and under-18s football and netball teams to still play.
Mr Waters said keeping a presence in the competition for the 2013 season helped it “buy some time” and start the reboot.
“Some new ideas were formed from some new people who got involved,” he said.
“It also allowed the town time to decide whether they wanted to keep the footy club and fight for it.
“People do get tired of continually trying to save and salvage it.
“But we had a great group of people get involved.”
Corowa-Rutherglen this week signalled its intention to go into recess with no decision made whether the Ovens and Murray league will allow the club to field teams in under-age football and netball grades.
The exodus of 30 players to date will prevent the club from having senior and reserves football.
Corowa-Rutherglen has also suffered a big loss of players from an A grade netball team that has challenged for the premiership in recent seasons.
The A grade netball team had a stint on the sidelines in 2007 before returning a year later.
The club also had a six figure debt to address.
Mark Adamson was appointed coach midway through 2013 and coached the club to seven wins the following year before being dumped as coach a month out from the 2015 finals series.
“It can turn quickly,” Mr Waters said.
“First year back we won seven games and one day we went up to Golden Square who had won five flags in a row and they used to beat us by 200 points.
“But we knocked them off, I will never forget that.
“The moment of truth comes and it requires a lot of work, dedication and commitment, but it’s worth doing.”
Kyneton has run successful major raffles for utes and caravans to raise important funds and is coached by former Geelong star Paul Chapman.
It was losing matches by an average 20 goals two years before going into recess.
Corowa-Rutherglen was on the up under former North Melbourne player and successful state league coach Peter German before a late season capitulation.
The club is in a financially healthy position.
Club members and sponsors will meet tonight to begin charting the path toward a “reset for 2024”.
FOOTY CLUBS IN RECESS
(How they fared)
ROCHESTER
Rochester sat out the 1972 season when a planned move to the Goulburn Valley league was blocked by the Bendigo league, where it had played since the end of World War 2 and won four flags in 1958-59 and 1962-63.
It was eventually granted its wish to join the GV league in 1973 and had to change colours from red and black to yellow and black.
Fierce rival Echuca also played in the Bendigo league before also being cleared to the GV in 1974.
DEVON-WELSHPOOL-WON WRON-WOODSIDE
Affectionately known as the Allies following a 1997 merger of Devon-Welshpool and Won Wron-Woodside, the club won flags in the now defunct Alberton league in 1998, 1999 and 2003.
But the league’s expansion to the west in the ensuing seasons meant extra travel for the Allies.
The club demerged in 2007, but Devon-Welshpool elected to keep the DWWWW name and went into the recess in 2014 before returning the next year.
It went into recess again a week before the start of the 2018 season and hasn’t come back.
The Alberton league folded at the end of the 2019 season.
BORDER-WALWA
Founded in 1960 following a merger of Jingellic-based Border United and Walwa, Border-Walwa won seven flags in the Upper Murray league including a dominant period in the 1990s when it claimed six.
Kevin Hunt played in all seven flags, but the wheels of fortune turned soon after.
The Black Summer fires were some of the worst experienced in the Upper Murray - the club went into recess in the lead-up to the 2020 season and hasn’t returned.
FEDERAL
Federal followed Border-Walwa into recess at the end of last year after failing to win support from the four other clubs left in the Upper Murray league to join forces and field a team in the Tallangatta league.
Federal had been in existence for 130 years and won close to 30 senior flags.
CAMPBELLS CREEK
The Covid wipe-out of 2020 was largely to blame for Dustin Martin’s original club Campbells Creek spending the 2021 season of the Maryborough-Castlemaine league in recess before returning last year.
It brought the league back to 14 clubs and it’s only win of 2022 was recorded against wooden spooner Maryborough Rovers.
ARDMONA
Ardmona is eyeing off a 2024 return after going into recess last year after Hawthorn Brownlow Medallist Shane Crawford tried to revive the club’s fortunes in 2021.
Ardmona had played in the Kyabram and District league since 1957.
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