HAMPTON ROVERS
Current Affiliation: Victorian Amateur Football Association (VAFA) since 1933
Home Ground: Boss James Reserve, Hampton
Formed: 1918 as Hampton 1st Scout Group; changed name to Hampton Rovers in 1931
Colours: Green and gold
Senior VAFA Premierships: A Section - 1951 (1 total); B Section - 1947 (1 total); C Section - 1946, 1998, 2001 (3 total); D Section - 1939, 1995 (2 total)
Senior Competition Best and Fairest Awards: J.N. Woodrow Medal (A Section) - Sam Birtles 1949; Merv Davidson 1954 (2 total); L.S. Zachariah Medal (C Section) - Stephen Anderson 2000 (1 total); L.S. Pepper Medal (D Section) - Ken Trinnick 1933-4-5; Chris Rowston 1975; Homer Legrand 1994 (3 Medallists/5 Medals)
| MINI-BIOGRAPHIES: | Bruce Harper Ross Smith |
Major hangovers in store as the club's 2001 C Section premiership celebrations get underway.
The club which evolved into Hampton Rovers began life in 1918 as an outlet for members of the 1st Hampton Scout Group who wished to play football. For over a decade, matches were played on a strictly informal basis, usually against other scout groups. However, in 1931 the club entered the Metropolitan Football League, assuming the name of Hampton Rovers in the process. After two seasons it moved to the Victorian Amateur Football Association, where it has remained ever since.
The VAFA during the 1930s comprised four senior grades, with Hampton Rovers commencing its involvement in the lowest of these, Grade D. After taking a few seasons to find its feet it mounted its first legitimate premiership challenge in 1938, ultimately finishing third. The following year saw it clamber onto the first rung of the promotion ladder with a 16.11 (107) to 14.13 (97) D Section grand final defeat of South Camberwell. The VAFA then went into recess for six seasons owing to the war, but when it resumed in 1946 so did Rovers' progress upward, courtesy of successive grand final wins over Parkside (Grade C) and Old Melburnians (Grade B). This meant that the club had now arrived at the dizzy heights of A Section, a status its performances over the next few seasons proved was well warranted.
Consecutive finals appearances in 1948 and 1949 sent out a clear message to established A Grade heavyweights such as University Blacks, Ormond and Old Scotch Collegians that a bona fide new power in amateur football had arrived. In 1951, captained by Doug Arnold, and with players like 1949 Woodrow Medallist Sam Birtles and club legend Col Adamson (see footnote 1) to the fore, Hampton Rovers achieved the ultimate, scoring a hard fought and thoroughly deserved 5 point victory over Ormond in the A Section grand final.
If getting to the top is hard, however, staying there is even harder, as the side was soon to discover. Indeed, when it next contested a senior grand final five years later it was in the VAFA's C Grade so sharp and sudden had been its fall from grace.
Football, particularly in its amateur incarnation, is about much more than the winning of premierships, though, and although Hampton Rovers have spent most of the last half century alternating between Sections C and D the club has been a trend-setter in other ways. The facilities at the club's primary home ground of Boss James Reserve, for instance, are among the finest to be found in any grade of the VAFA. They include spacious changing rooms, a canteen, a medical room, a licensed bar, and a modern, fully equipped gymnasium. The oval itself can be floodlit when required to a standard sufficient for training or junior matches. Meanwhile, the club's secondary home ground at Ludstone Street, used by several of its junior grades, has also been developed to a high standard.
The club is rightly proud of its history, as well as of its ever evolving tradition as both football club and community focal point. On the field, premierships have continued to arrive almost annually, with well in excess of fifty having been achieved by the end of the 2006 season, seven of them at senior level. In 2007, Hampton Rovers fielded a total of twenty-one teams each week ranging from under-nines to the C Grade senior side coached by former Coburg star and 1988 Liston Trophy winner Gary Sheldon. The club's senior team competed in D1 Section, and did well, earning promotion to C Grade as runner-up.
Considering its humble origins, the club's achievements stand as testimony both to the hard work and commitment of those who have served it down the years, and to the enduring appeal of football at a time when counter attractions have probably never been so persuasive and so plentiful.
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Footnotes
1. In a career spanning twenty-one seasons Adamson played a total of 312 games for the club at various levels. Return to Main Text