RUSHWORTH
Current Affiliation: Kyabram District Football League (KDFL) since 1998
Formed: 1880s
Colours: Black and yellow
Emblem: Tigers
Senior Premierships: Goulburn Valley Football League (GVFL) - 1930-1-2-3, 1935 (5 total); Heathcote District Football League (HDFL) - 1965, 1969, 1977 (3 total); KDFL - 2004 (1 total)
Senior Competition Best and Fairest Awards: Morrison Medal (GVFL) - Keith Kane 1938-9; Gerard Sexton 1948*; Bill Cruz 1953; Con O'Toole 1955; Lindsay Turnball 1957 (5 Medallists/6 Medals) Cheatly Medal (HDFL) - Ian McDonald 1968; Alec Horne 1973; John Lambden 1975; Jeff Turpin 1993 (4 total) McNamara Medal (KDFL) - Jamie Waasdorp 2002 (1 total)
* indicates awarded retrospectively having originally been lost on a countback of votes.
| MINI-BIOGRAPHIES: | Greg Stockdale |
The old gold-mining town of Rushworth was established during the 1850s and grew rapidly. At its peak during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries there were no fewer than twenty-six working mines in the locality supporting a floating population that on occasion was reckoned to number as many as 40,000 inhabitants. Football was definitely being played in the area as early as the 1880s but the Rushworth Football Club did not formally affiliate with a league or association until 1897, when it was a founding member, along with Murchison, Nagambie and Whroo, of the Upper Goulburn Football Association. Prior to World War One Rushworth also spent time as a member of the Goulburn Valley Football Association (1900-12) and the Waranga North East Football League (1913-14).
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Rushworth's Con O'Toole (left) receives the 1955 Morrison Medal from GVFL president, Tom Hastie. (Click the image to view an enlarged version.) |
By the 1930s Rushworth's most prosperous days were well behind it, and indeed the severe economic depression of that time had such an inimical impact on the town that its very survival was threatened. It is somewhat paradoxical therefore that the 1930s saw the Rushworth Football Club achieving the most sustained and significant successes in its history, including a then unprecedented four Goulburn Valley Football League premierships in a row between 1930 and 1933. Rushworth had returned to the Goulburn Valley competition when football had resumed after the Great War, and over the ensuing decade the team's performances had steadily improved. The 1929 season brought Rushworth's first GVFL grand final, the first of ten that the side was to contest over a twelve season period. Five of these were won, making the Tigers without doubt the pre-eminent football force in the competition during the 1930s. During the 1940s and 1950s country football in Victoria gradually became more outwardly professional, and hence more expensive to administer, a state of affairs that made life increasingly difficult for small clubs such as Rushworth. By the 1960s it seemed clear that the club had two choices: it could either struggle on in the GVFL, becoming increasingly less competitive as well as economically poorer until it reached the point where it had little option other than to roll over and die, or it could down-size. Swallowing a hefty dose of pride, Rushworth bravely opted for the latter course of action, and the 1965 season saw it fielding teams in the somewhat lower profile, but still intensely competitive, Heathcote District Football League. |
Confirmation that the club had made the right decision duly arrived in the most gratifying way imaginable as both seniors and reserves won their respective premierships at the first time of asking. As far as the seniors were concerned, this was their first flag for three decades - far too long for a town as steeped in football lore and tradition as Rushworth, and celebrations were predictably exhaustive. The reserves had never previously won a premiership, giving further cause for celebration.
The Tigers maintained their involvement in the HDFL until 1998, contesting half a dozen senior grand finals for wins in 1965, 1969 and 1977. However, just as had been the case in the GVFL earlier in the century, the team increasingly found the going difficult, and in 1998 it was deemed necessary to make what amounted to another calculated narrowing of focus by crossing to the Kyabram District Football League. Once again, the decision was fairly swiftly ratified as the seniors made the finals in their first season, before contesting their first grand final in twenty-two years in 1999. Nagambie proved to have the Tigers' measure on that occasion, but it was nevertheless clear that the Rushworth Football Club had found a playing level commensurate with the team's ability. In 2004 this impression was reinforced when the senior team lost only 1 match out of 16 during the home and away rounds to advance to the finals as minor premier. Consecutive 30 point victories over Stanhope and Lancaster then gave the Tigers their first senior flag in more than a quarter of a century.
Given that the town of Rushworth is nowadays home to scarcely 1,000 inhabitants, the continuing achievements of its football team appear quite extraordinary - until you remind yourself of the tradition, stretching back more than a hundred years, out of which it emerges; a tradition every bit as rich in its way as the seams of gold which first prompted Europeans to settle in the area in the middle of the nineteenth century.
Where now?
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