IPSWICH
Affiliation History: Queensland Football League (QFL) 1906-9 (withdrew after 2 rounds of the 1909 season) and 1922
Home Ground: North Ipswich Reserve
Formed: 1906
Colours: Red and white. (The original Ipswich team of the 1880s wore blue and black.)
Senior Premierships: Nil
The pages of history are littered with tall stories and fables - the apple falling on Newton's head, George Washington and the cherry tree, Archimedes and his bath-tub. Such tales arise for different reasons: some clearly have a didactic or moralising purpose, others are simply the product of wishful thinking, or adulation grown out of hand.
Football can boast plenty of examples of this latter type of tall story: Roy Cazaly donning the boots to play senior football at the age of fifty-eight, the existence of a flourishing Australian football competition in the Glasgow docklands prior to World War One, Laurie Nash booting 18 goals for Victoria against South Australia in less than three quarters. As far as the game in Queensland is concerned, one of the longest running and most persistent myths concerns the supposed achievements - or, more accurately, one specific achievement - of an Ipswich football team during the mid-1880s. This achievement allegedly occurred at a time when football in Queensland was in a reasonably healthy state, and nowhere more so than in Ipswich, which might legitimately have been described as a hotbed of the game. Thus, when mighty Essendon journeyed north to Queensland, and took on a combined Ipswich team, few people would have been surprised to see the VFA club, which was certainly far from invincible, lowering its colours (see footnote 1). This perhaps explains why, for decades, the myth of such a match having actually taken place, and of victory having gone to the men in blue and black, appears to have gone unchallenged. However, recent research by Murray Bird has revealed that not only did no such match occur, Essendon never even travelled to Queensland during this period.
Such a discovery should in no way sully the reputation of a truly ground breaking team. Had rugby not supplanted football in the affections of most Brisbane-ites, thus depriving Ipswich of its only feasible nearby source of opposition, the history of football in the sunshine state would almost certainly have been very different.
As it was, the demise of football in Queensland's capital foreshadowed its eventual demise everywhere else in the colony. For the better part of a decade, Australian football was only played socially, and even then only very occasionally. In 1903, however, the Queensland Football League was established, with competition getting underway the following year. Early on, the league proved vibrant and successful, so much so that within a couple of seasons it was confidently directing feelers at potential teams from outside Brisbane. Not surprisingly, it was a team from Ipswich that was first to bite the bullet. Competitive from the start, it finished third in all three of its completed seasons, but by 1908 the spirit of optimism which had characterised the QFL at its inception, and for a year or two afterwards, was rapidly waning. Ipswich finished the home and away rounds in second spot, with 9 wins from 12 matches, but this apparently excellent record disguises the fact that the Brisbane teams were becoming increasingly reluctant to travel out of the city. Sometimes, they fielded weakened teams, and on one occasion even forfeited the game. The problem was mitigated during the sectional round and finals when two of Ipswich's opponents failed to turn up. During the early weeks of the 1909 season matters quickly reached a head when it became apparent that the city clubs were tending to regard their away fixtures against Ipswich as tantamount to byes. When a meeting between the QFL's president and secretary and representatives of the Ipswich club failed to resolve matters to Ipswich's satisfaction, the club elected to withdraw from the competition with a view to establishing a four team league of its own.
Ipswich again fielded a team in the QFL in 1922 but, presumably finding that attitudes in the city had not improved, withdrew after just a single season.
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Footnotes
1. During the 1880s, Essendon in fact lost matches while on tour in both South Australia and Tasmania. Return to Main Text