HAHNDORF (Ambleside)
Current Affiliation: Hills Football League (HFL) since 1967
Club Address: Pine Avenue, Hahndorf, South Australia 5245
Home Ground: Hahndorf Oval
Colours: Black and white
Emblem: Magpies
Senior A Grade Premierships: Hills Football Association (HFA) - 1904-5-6, 1928, 1930-1-2, 1954, 1963-4, 1966 (11 total); HFL Central Division - 1984-5, 1992-3, 1995, 1997, 2001 (7 total)
| MINI-BIOGRAPHIES: | Peter Darley |
In common with many Australian football clubs of long standing the precise origins of the Hahndorf Football Club are uncertain. There are suggestions that football was being played in the Hahndorf area as early as the 1880s but if so it appears probable that the set-up was extremely informal. The earliest known references to a Hahndorf Football Club participating in an organised competition date from 1901, when the club was a member of an embryonic Hills Football Association, in which it enjoyed premiership success in 1904-5-6. Two years after winning the third of these premierships, however, the club was unable to recruit sufficient players to field a team, and although it resumed competition in 1908, its playing ranks having been bolstered by students from the local college, success was to be a long time returning.
Because of the anti-German sentiment generated by the Great War Hahndorf felt constrained, when football in the Hills competition resumed after the conflict, to alter its name to Ambleside. During the 1920s it also adopted new colours, replacing the red and black worn since 1908 with the black and white still worn to this day. As Ambleside, the club won premierships in 1928, 1930, 1931 and 1932. A noteworthy first for the club came in 1933 when John Mullins won the inaugural Hills Football Association Mail Medal. Later in the 1930s the club's present day home ground of Hahndorf Oval was used for the first time, and its original name of Hahndorf was re-assumed.
Since World War Two Hahndorf has continued to enjoy consistent premiership success, initially in the HFA, and since 1967 in the competition which succeeded it, the Hills Football League. Not that it has all been plain sailing: during the early 1970s, for example, the club was almost forced to disband, and it spent quite a few seasons struggling to muster a win in the HFL's lower division. However, for more than thirty years now, Hahndorf has competed at the top level, combining consistent on-field success with a prominent community role that goes well beyond the mere playing of football. In 2007, the club will be fielding a total of ten teams, including eight junior teams from under eights to under seventeens. The seniors, under the coaching of Gary Carlson, will be hopeful of building on the promise shown in 2006 when they qualified for the finals in 4th spot before losing the elimination final to Blackwood.
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