KEILOR
Current Affiliation: Essendon District Football League (EDFL) since 1932
Formed: 1894
Club Address: 6 Mantaura Avenue, Taylors Lakes 3038, Victoria
Home Ground: Keilor Recreation Reserve
Colours: Red, white and blue
Senior EDFL Premierships: A Grade - 1973, 1985, 1988, 1995-6-7, 2000-1 (8 total); B Grade - 1968 (1 total)
League Best and Fairest Awards: A Grade (Reynolds Medal since 1955) - T.Milburn 1935; R.Koehler 1984; G.Halbert 1990; J.Thorley 1997; R.Haoucher 2004 (5 total); B Grade (W.Hutchison Medal since 1957) - T.Mooney 1964 (1 total)
Most Games: 294 by Denis Brown
| MINI-BIOGRAPHIES: | John Ellis |
A Keilor football team is known to have existed as early as 1894, but it was not until 1926 that a formally constituted Keilor Football Club first engaged in official competition as an inaugural member of the Keilor and Broadmeadows Football League. Keilor spent half a dozen seasons in the KBFL, winning senior premierships in 1926 and 1928, before crossing to the Essendon District Football League, which was just about to embark on its third season, in 1932.
Compared to clubs such as Ascot Vale, Woodland and La Mascotte prior to World War Two, and the likes of Doutta Stars and Moonee Imperials after it, Keilor was not advantageously located when it came to having access to large pools of potential players, and it was largely as a consequence of this that the club's early performances were undistinguished. However, it perservered, and in 1968 finally broke through to win a B Grade premiership, its first at senior level for forty years. The victorious side was captain-coached by former Daylesford and South Melbourne player Norm McKenzie who was still with Keilor five years later, albeit only as a player, when the club broke through for its first ever EDFL A Grade flag. In compliance with an emerging trend, Keilor had dispensed with the idea of a playing coach by this time, and the premiership team was led from the sidelines by John Edwards, with Paul Blanks as the on-field leader. Also in the side was arguably the greatest player in Keilor's history, Bruce Ellis, who in 1973 was in the third season of a 257 game career that would see him win no fewer than seven club best and fairest awards, easily a record. By the time he retired as a player after the club had won the 1985 A Grade premiership, Ellis, who played most of his football as a key position forward, had for good measure also topped Keilor's goal kicking list on five occasions. He was the only player to appear in both the 1973 and 1985 grand final wins.
Since claiming the 1985 A Grade flag Keilor has been by some measure the EDFL's most successful club, adding further A Grade successes in 1988, 1995-6-7, and 2000-1. The two most recent premiership sides featured Brendan Hickman as coach, and Steve Long as captain, with Long etching his name into the record books by virtue of the fact that he had earlier skippered the triumphant 1996 and 1997 combinations, having also played in the 1995 flag-winning side. Five premierships is not a club record, however; that honour belongs to Rod Callahan, whose 207 games between 1985 and 2002 included the successful grand finals of 1988, 1995-6-7 and 2000-1.
The last half a dozen seasons have seen Keilor finish 4th, 2nd, 3rd, 3rd, 4th and 3rd in A Grade, confirming the club's status as one of the competition's pre-eminent forces. That rating was seldom better exemplified than during most of a 2003 season which produced a 100% record from 18 home and away matches followed by an 11.11 (77) to 5.6 (36) 2nd semi final win over Oak Park. In the grand final re-match a fortnight later, however, the Keilor players inexplicably fell in a hole largely of their own creation and allowed the 'Roos to run all over them in surging to victory by 59 points.
Such reversals tend to form part of every great club's heritage as they only ever arise in the context of performances of consistently high standard. Keilor's performances have been of a consistently high standard for more than three decades now, and further successes in the near future would surprise no-one. Vital to that success is the health of the club as a whole, not merely in terms of the achievements of the senior team. Clear evidence of that health in Keilor's case can be inferred from the fact that, in 2007, it fielded a total of eighteen teams each weekend, and held the registrations of in excess of four hundred players. If past experience is a reliable indicator, many of those players will spend their entire football lives with Keilor, thereby reinforcing both the club's own unique identity and culture, and its importance in the local community - an importance that at once derives from, but also in a sense transcends, the high profile business of winning premierships.
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