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SUBIACO - Part One
Affiliated: First Rate Junior Association - 1896-1900; WAFA/WANFL/WAFL/WASFL/Westar Rules 1901-present
Club Address: P.O. Box 52, Subiaco 6008, Western Australia
Home Ground: Medibank Stadium (formerly known as Leederville Oval). The club was previously based at Subiaco Oval.
Formed: 1896
Colours: Maroon and gold
Emblem: Lions (formerly Maroons)
Premierships: SENIORS 1912-13, 1915, 1924, 1973, 1986, 1988, 2004, 2006-7 (10 total) RESERVES (from 1925) 1928-9, 1931, 1958-9, 1969, 1972, 1984, 1995, 1997-8-9, 2002-3, 2005, 2007 (16 total) COLTS (from 1957) 1989 (1 total) Western Australian State Premierships -1913 & 1924 (2 total) OTHER PREMIERSHIPS - First Rate Junior Association - 1898, 1900 (2 total); R.P. Rodriguez Shield: 1970, 1973, 1986, 1995, 2003, 2005, 2006 (7 total)
Sandover Medallists: T.Outridge 1921; J.Leonard 1926 &1929*; L.Daily 1935; H.W.Bunton 1938, 1939 & 1941; I.Dargie 1991 & 1994; R.Ambrose 2000; A.Pickett 2004; M.Priddis 2006 (8 Medallists/12 Medals)
Tassie Medallists: Peter Eakins 1969 (1 total)
All Australians: Brian Sarre 1966; Peter Eakins 1969; George Young 1972; Laurie Keene 1986; Andrew MacNish 1986 (5 total)
League Top Goalkickers: H.Limb (40) 1913 & (46) 1915; P.Rodriguez (36) 1920; D.Glass (83) 1957; A.Robertson (89) 1962, (96) 1964, (162) 1968, (114) 1969, (116) 1970, (111) 1971, (98) 1972; T.Breman (111) 1987 & (75) 1988; J.Heatley (111) 1993 & (123) 1995; T.Ridley (77) 1998; B.Smith (84) 2003, (109) 2004 & (126) 2007; L.Oakley (83) 2005 (20 total)
Highest Score: 29.33 (207) vs. Peel 7.8 (50) at Kalgoorlie in round 7 2008
Most Games: 260 by Neil Taylor from 1975 to 1989
Record Home Attendance: 21,088 in round 10 1986 at Subiaco Oval: Subiaco 14.26 (110); Claremont 7.20 (62)
Record Finals Attendance: 46,855 for 1973 grand final at Subiaco Oval: Subiaco 10.12 (72); West Perth 6.4 (40)
Overall Success Rate 1901-2007: 43.9%
* indicates awarded retrospectively by Westar Rules authorities in 1997.
Towards the end of the 1986 football season Subiaco coach Haydn Bunton junior was one of several men rumoured to be in the running for the role of inaugural coach of the West Coast Eagles. However, Bunton, who had always regarded Subiaco as 'home', was quick to dismiss the speculation, stating that it was his ambition to restore the Lions to their former greatness (see footnote 1). Such a viewpoint seems either perverse or outlandish from an early twenty-first century perspective, but at the time there was nothing perceptibly naive or irrational about it; Bunton was merely giving voice to aspirations of a sort with which most or all of his contemporary WAFL club coaches would have been able to identify. Few if any observers at the time could possibly have envisaged the structural rigor mortis which would all too rapidly emerge as a side effect of the VFL's self-propelled transformation from the strongest of all the state leagues to a pseudo-national concern with responsibility for virtually every aspect of the game's development and well-being. In this new context, the kind of 'greatness' to which Bunton referred would be rendered inaccessible to all but the 'chosen few', and even among these it would be, at best, a greatness artificially tempered and constrained (see footnote 2).
In 1986 the much travelled Bunton was in the third year of his second spell in charge of the club which he perhaps loved above all others (see footnote 3). During his previous coaching stint between 1968 and 1972 he had laid the foundations for Subiaco's 1973 premiership, a success which brought to an end a forty-nine year drought. However, since 1973 the Lions' fortunes had again declined, with the team contesting the finals only once from 1974 until Bunton's arrival ten years later, and winning just 55 out of 232 matches in that time for a miserly success rate of just 23.7%, easily the worst in the WA(N)FL during the period. Against this backdrop of perennial failure, the announcement in Subiaco's 1983 annual report that Haydn Bunton junior had accepted a five year contract to coach the club gave Lions fans a rare reason to rejoice. The arrival of Bunton, if not quite tantamount to the 'return of the messiah', nevertheless seemed to provide genuine grounds for optimism. As a player, Bunton had more than compensated for any inherent deficiencies in pure footballing ability by bringing a superabundance of vigour, determination and intelligence to bear on his game, and it was these same qualities which he continued to exhibit, and to demand of his players, as a coach (see footnote 4).
Bunton's arrival coincided with the return from Victoria of Peter Featherby, who had played for three seasons under Bunton during his previous stint in charge, and was by this stage one of the most proficient on ballers and prolific kick gatherers in Australia. The recruitment of half a dozen other league standard footballers provided the Lions with sufficient impetus to enable them to win more games in 1984 than they had managed in both of the previous two seasons combined. Admittedly, 9 wins from 21 matches was only good enough to elevate the team one place up the ladder, from 8th to 7th, but 1984 was an especially competitive season in Western Australia and overall it was clear that definite, discernible progress had been made. The battle lines had now been drawn; further improvement in 1985 was both demanded and expected. The fact that the Subiaco Reserves team had won the 1984 flag - the club's first at any level for ten seasons - was seen as providing further grounds for optimism.
| Dual Sandover
Medallist Peter Spencer from East Perth (shown
at right) was one
of several recruits to further bolster Subiaco's playing ranks in 1985.
With an accomplished and highly versatile pool of players now at his disposal
Bunton was able to steer the Lions to their best season since 1973, only to see
the ultimate prize of a premiership fall just outside their grasp as East
Fremantle won a thrilling grand final by 5 points. (See
the GREAT
GAMES section
for a blow by blow account of this match.)
Defeats of this
sort are never easy to countenance, but it seems evident from history that, for
many teams, they do prove instructive. This certainly proved to be so in
Subiaco's case. After warming up for the 1986 season with
a 25.25 (175) to 17.11 (113) mauling of VFL club St Kilda
the Lions went from strength to strength, ultimately qualifying to contest the
finals as minor premiers for only the 6th time in the club's history (see
footnote 5).
An uncharacteristically lackadaisical 2nd semi performance against East Fremantle reminded everyone that much work remained to be done, however, and for the following week's preliminary final Bunton had the whole team primed to perfection, eliciting a 12 goal annihilation of Perth. In the grand final, Sharks skipper Brian Peake won the toss but little else as Subi thereafter produced a performance of consummate fire, determination and skill to turn the tables and overturn the odds in quite emphatic fashion, winning in the end with apparent ease by 69 points. After rattling on 6 opening term goals to East Fremantle's 1 the Lions players already had a hand apiece on the premiership cup, and by half time, with Subiaco leading 13.4 to 3.7, the match was as good as over. Lions centre half back Mark Zanotti picked up the Simpson Medal as best afield, while back pocket Dwayne Lamb, ruckman Phil Scott, wingman Greg Carpenter, and on baller Andrew MacNish were among many other Subi stars to shine. |
|
The following week brought a challenge match at Subiaco Oval against VFL premiers Hawthorn. Fort much of the game the Lions appeared superior, leading as they did at every change by 10, 23 and 2 points, only for the Hawks' superior fitness to enable them to get up at the death and snatch a scarcely deserved 18.11 (119) to 17.15 (117) victory. Dwayne Lamb, Mick Lee, Mark Zanotti and Brian Taylor were perhaps the most significant contributors to a Subiaco performance which suggested that, given different circumstances, Haydn Bunton's aspirations of greatness for the club he loved might realistically have been fulfilled on a national stage. As it was, the 1987 season saw Subiaco having to front up without close to half of its premiership twenty, a situation rendered all the more galling by virtue of the fact that no fewer than half a dozen of the departing contingent still regularly plied their trade on Subiaco Oval, albeit in the 'foreign' colours of royal blue and gold. With the entrance into the VFL of a Perth-based club, West Coast, the Western Australian football landscape had changed dramatically, and for ever.
|
Supercoach Haydn Bunton Junior, who oversaw a spectacular upsurge in Subiaco's fortunes that was ultimately de-railed by developments in the game which were outside the club's control. |
Overnight, playing football at a club like
Subiaco went from being perceived as a pinnacle of achievement for a young
player to merely a means toward an end - that end being participation in
football's self-declared elite competition, the VFL. Football patrons,
recognising this change, modified their patterns of behaviour significantly as a
result. In 1987, a season which very nearly brought the club a 2nd
successive flag, Subiaco's matches attracted less than half as many spectators
as in 1986. Consequently Haydn Bunton had, as a result of forces outside
his control, suddenly been transformed from coach of a 1st grade football team
the equal of almost any in Australia, to a mentor of largely youthful talent
whose predominant aspirations lay elsewhere. This same tragic state of
affairs was simultaneously played out at numerous other football clubs across
the country, dealing the sport a body blow the scale of which will probably only
truly become evident when the generation which experienced it has been replaced
by the next.
In the meantime, however, there were still members and supporters to be satisfied, and football matches to be won. Subiaco Football Club in 1987, almost miraculously given its player losses, went within a single game of retaining its title. As it was, Claremont, which under Gerard Neesham's aegis had introduced a youth development programme par excellence, proved much too good for the Lions in a one-sided grand final. (Claremont's 'reward' for its initiative and enterprise would not ultimately be to its liking, however.) |
With the attention of Western Australian football supporters increasingly being focused on the VFL, Subiaco's membership figures, in common with those of every other WAFL club, continued to decline alarmingly. The 1988 season saw a 15% reduction in full memberships at Subi, while the total figures, despite being artificially buttressed by a large number of reciprocal West Coast Eagles memberships, nevertheless still dropped by 7%. The situation would undoubtedly have been significantly worse had the Lions not continued to perform with extraordinary distinction on the field, ultimately qualifying for a 4th consecutive 2nd semi final.
In 1985 a crowd of 23,500, considered fairly modest at the time, had turned up for Subiaco's 2nd semi final meeting with East Fremantle. Three years on and considerably less than half that number paid to watch the Lions' 25 point demise against reigning premiers Claremont in a game that was as good as over by half time. Bunton, however, would have taken heart from his players' methodical 2nd half fight back which gave the eventual score line a semblance of respectability.
In the preliminary final the Lions overcame a spirited challenge from East Fremantle to edge home by 3 points after a classic, topsy turvy encounter. Subiaco opened brilliantly to lead 8.2 to 2.4 at the 1st change but by half time the Sharks had pegged the margin back to 21 points. In the 3rd term, leg weariness among a number of Lions players, who had only had a six day break compared to their opponents' two weeks, seemed to be taking its toll. East Fremantle added 8.6 to 1.2 during this period and looked to be running away with the game. Prospects of a Subiaco recovery looked remote, but somehow the players managed to dig deep and find another level; the last quarter yielded 7 goals to 2, a heroic victory, and, most importantly of all, the seeds of a 7th league premiership.
| The 1988 WAFL grand final promised an
archetypal contrast in playing styles, with Claremont's pace, precision, poise
and panache pitted against the more traditional qualities of the Lions.
Despite this, only 28,183 spectators turned up, the lowest grand final crowd
since 1952, and scarcely more than attended the SANFL 2nd semi final the same
weekend.
According to the writer of a preview in the grand final issue of the 'Football Budget', "Claremont must be favoured.......because they have a more even spread of talent. But it will not be the one-sided clash which was the source of so much disappointment only a fortnight ago." (See footnote 6.) In the event, this proved to be wrong on both counts, for after a closely contested 1st half the game was one-sided in the extreme as Subiaco, displaying great concentration, application and grit, ran right away from the Tigers to record a sensational, if somewhat surprising, 62 point victory. On baller Mick Lee was awarded the Simpson Medal after a tireless performance; he was ably supported by ruckman Laurie Keene, a controversial inclusion after Subiaco had exploited a loophole in the regulations governing the eligibility for participation in WAFL finals games of West Coast Eagles players, as well as 6 goal half forward John Georglades, tenacious full back Rod Willet, and the evergreen Taylor brothers, Brian and Neil. The Lions contested one further losing grand final in 1991 before Bunton departed as coach at the end of the following season, having supervised the most auspicious era in the history of the club since pre-World War One days. However, just as on that previous occasion the club was prevented from achieving sustained dominance by the intervention of nefarious external forces. In 1915, it had been the need to supply young men for the killing fields of Europe that had effectively quashed the club's nascent greatness; three quarters of a century on and a cash-strapped Victorian Football League with its own survival as the paramount, some would say sole, item on its agenda wreaked much the same effect, this time permanently. |
Subiaco ruckman Laurie Keene, shown above in action against East Fremantle, was an imposing influence on the 1988 grand final. |
Over the ensuing decade the club experienced mixed fortunes, but no further premierships, although it came close under Gary Buckenara's tutelage in 1995, losing the grand final to West Perth.
That same 1995 season saw a second Western Australian club, Fremantle, admitted to the expanded VFL competition which by this stage had become known as the Australian Football League, or AFL. As a result the playing ranks of the WAFL's eight clubs became even more diluted, and the profile of the competition declined still further. The controversial admission to the league in 1997 of a ninth club, the Mandurah-based Peel Thunder, inevitably spawned a further deterioration in playing standards.
As football in Western Australia enters a new century the brutal fact is that once proud clubs like Subiaco no longer occupy pivotal roles in the game's development, and the sort of greatness to which Haydn Bunton junior aspired has been placed forever out of reach. Attendances at WAFL fixtures had by the beginning of the twenty-first century slumped to a level comparable with some of the stronger Victorian country leagues.
In a sense, life for those associated with the Subiaco Football Club has come full circle since its formation in 1896, and admission to the then 2nd tier of organised football in Perth, the 1st Rate Junior Association (see footnote 7). The 1890s was a decade of large scale gold discoveries on the Western Australian goldfields of Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie; at the same time, the colonies of Victoria and South Australia were undergoing a severe economic depression, prompting many Victorian and South Australian men to uproot and head west in search of fortune. Many of these fortune seekers were footballers, and even those who were not brought knowledge of and passion for the game. Inevitably, many headed further west, to Perth and Fremantle, once their gold-digging days were over, and the settlement of Subiaco was one of their most popular haunts. Indeed, examination of local school enrolment records at around the time of the Subiaco Football Club's formation reveals that the overwhelming majority of pupils originated from outside Western Australia, and that of these by far the biggest proportion hailed from Victoria (see footnote 8). It is hardly surprising therefore that interest among Subiaco residents in the code of football which was still fairly widely known at this stage as 'Victorian Rules' was considerable.
Records of junior football in Perth at the close of the nineteenth century are scant, but it does not appear that the fledgling Subiaco Football Club, which chose maroon and blue as its colours, enjoyed much success in its inaugural season. Success would not be long in arriving, however.
Originally based on a stretch of common ground off Mueller Road the club found a more suitable home in 1898 at a new recreation ground in West Subiaco, later known as Shenton Park. This relocation to enhanced playing premises coincided with, and perhaps partly helped initiate, enhanced on field performances, culminating in Subiaco's first ever premiership, clinched in mid-August, two games from the end of the season, with a 4 point victory over Fremantle Imperials (see footnote 9). Two seasons later in 1900 Subiaco brought the nineteenth century to a highly satisfactory end by repeating the achievement after incurring just a single loss for the entire season.
Subiaco's emergence as a junior football power was timely given that the Western Australian Football Association, after a number of seasons during which the game's image had been severely tarnished by profligate roughness among its players, had begun to consolidate, and indeed was now looking to expand. Subiaco, along with fellow 1st Rate Junior Association powerhouse North Fremantle, appeared to have all the necessary credentials for admission to the higher tier (not least of which was the fact that both clubs had their own secure playing venues), and their elevation to the WAFA in 1901, bringing the number of clubs in that competition to six, was no surprise. Buoyed therefore by the all pervading optimism which embraced Australia as it embarked on the new adventure of nationhood, those associated with the Subiaco Football Club could probably see no reason to feel anything other than supreme, unbridled optimism as the Century of Change commenced.
Where now?
or
or
Footnotes
1. 'Football Times', volume 11, number 26, 11/9/86, page 19. Return to Main Text
2. In 1986 a football team tended to achieve widespread recognition as 'great' by exclusive virtue of its achievements on the field of play; the hard economic realities which fuelled these achievements were, to all intents and purposes, as far as the average supporter was concerned at any rate, invisible. Nowadays, it seems, it is the on field activities which have become almost incidental to a club's success, with some of the most ostensibly 'successful' teams of recent years (one thinks, for instance, of Hawthorn, the Kangaroos, Claremont and Port Adelaide Magpies) coincidentally being among those most frequently mentioned as being in danger of financial collapse. Return to Main Text
3. As evidence for this, see, for example, 'Football Times', volume 11, number 28, 25/9/86, page 15. "My earliest football memory was wearing a Subiaco guernsey," Bunton declared, and it was his lifelong ambition to steer the club to a premiership. Return to Main Text
4. In order to fulfill his ambition of playing League football Bunton had to overcome impediments which the vast majority of individuals would have found insurmountable. As a child, he suffered from polio, which left him with one leg approximately 8 centimetres shorter than the other, while during a coaching stint in Tasmania in the late 1950s he was involved in a car accident in which he sustained a horrific knee injury which by rights ought to have left him a cripple. Only a combination of superior surgical skills and Bunton's own indefatigable will to succeed enabled him to recover sufficiently to not only play football again but to captain-coach Swan Districts to 3 consecutive flags and win the 1962 Sandover Medal. Return to Main Text
5. Seven if you include the under-age, wartime competition of 1943. Return to Main Text
6. '1988 WAFL Grand Final Football Budget', 18/9/88, page 27. Return to Main Text
7. The term 'junior' referred to the competition's status, not the age of the players. Return to Main Text
8. For a more detailed discussion of this point, see page 4 of Diehards 1896-1945: The Story of the Subiaco Football Club by Ken Spillman. Return to Main Text
9. A new scoring system, whereby goals counted for 6 points, and behinds were worth 1, had been introduced in South Australia and Victoria in 1897, and was introduced to Western Australian football this year. Return to Main Text