Ovens & Murray Football League

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The Ovens and Murray Football League, often locally referred to as simply the O&M, is a semi-professional Australian rules football league based around ten clubs in the north-eastern Victoria, Australia and southern New South Wales, Australia, and is affiliated with the Victorian Country Football League. The current chairman of the league is Greg Claney and the current general manager is Tom O'Connor.

All clubs field teams in three grades - senior, reserve and under 18s - as well as three grades of women's netball in an associated competition. A home and away season of eighteen rounds is played so that each club plays each other twice, followed by a series of finals involving the top five teams, played to a McIntyre System schedule culminating in a Grand Final, usually played at the Lavington Sports Ground. Attendances at games during the home and away season vary from 300 to 2,000, while the grand final often draws in excess of 15,000 spectators.

[edit] Current Clubs

Club	Nickname	Colours	Location	Official Website
Albury Football Club	Tigers		Albury	official site
Corowa Rutherglen Football Club	Kangaroos		Corowa	official site
Lavington Panthers Football Club	Panthers		Lavington	official site
Myrtleford Football Club	Saints		Myrtleford	official site
North Albury Football Club	Hoppers		North Albury	official site
Wangaratta Football Club	Magpies		Wangaratta	official site
Wangaratta Rovers Football Club	Hawks		Wangaratta	official site
Wodonga Football Club	Bulldogs		Wodonga	official site
Wodonga Raiders Football Club	Raiders		Wodonga	official site
Yarrawonga Football Club	Pigeons		Yarrawonga	official site

[edit] History

[edit] Beginnings

The league began as the Ovens & Murray Football Association in the 1900s, although it was interrupted by World War I. In 1926 the name was changed to its present form. Around this time the clubs contesting the league included Wangaratta, Hume Weir (which drew many of its players from workers constructing the Hume Dam at the time), Yarrawonga and two clubs from the town of Albury; St Patricks and Albury (not to be confused with the present Albury club). These two clubs were largely divided amongst sectarian lines, Albury being Protestant and St Patricks being Roman Catholic, and after much tension, in 1929 the two clubs agreed to disband and form two new clubs, East Albury and West Albury, with the player base to be drawn geographically.

In 1930, Haydn Bunton was recruited from the league by VFL club Fitzroy, where he became regarded as one of the best VFL players in the Depression-era and would go on to win three Brownlow Medals. Incidentally, Bunton Park, where North Albury Football Club is based, was not named after Haydn, but rather his brother Cleaver Bunton, who was elected president of the O&MFL in 1930 and would serve in that role until 1969. (Cleaver would also later serve as mayor of Albury for 30 years.)

[edit] Post-World War Two

In 1940, the league went into recess again for the duration of World War II, before full competition was resumed in 1946. In 1947 North Albury was admitted, followed by Wangaratta Rovers and Myrtleford, who were admitted from the Ovens & King Football League in 1950. The Wangaratta Rovers would go on to become the most successful club in the O&M, winning fifteen premierships to date.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s the league began to gain a reputation within Victoria as being the strongest competition outside the then VFL and VFA. The best players were often recruited from the O&M to play for one of the "city" clubs, but it was not uncommon for a VFL player to retire from the "big" league play in the O&M or another country league, and perhaps start a coaching career there as well, often at the same time as a playing coach. One notable example of this, as far as the O&M was concerned, was Bob Rose, who retired from Collingwood as a player in 1955 and coached the Wangaratta Rovers to two premierships in 1958 and 1960, after which he returned to Collingwood to continue his coaching career.

[edit] 1970s and 1980s

In 1968, the VFL introduced country recruitment zones throughout Victoria and Riverina, which limited the areas from which each VFL club could recruit. The area covered by the O&MFL was included in North Melbourne's zone, and thus quite a few of the better players from the O&M came to play for the Kangaroos. These included Xavier Tanner and John Longmire, who had won the O&M seniors leading goalkicker in a season in the 1980s with Corowa-Rutherglen before his move.

In 1974 the O&MFL was disaffiliated by the VCFL when the O&MFL refused to accept an application from the Lavington Football Club to join the league. By this stage the football club was based at the Lavington Sports Club, an established licensed club, and was strong enough to field teams in both the Tallangatta League and Hume Football League the following year.

The makeup of the competition remained stable until 1979, when Corowa and Rutherglen merged into Corowa-Rutherglen, and the Lavington Football Club was finally admitted from the Farrer Football League, so the number of clubs remained at ten.

Lavington's home ground, the Lavington Sports Club Oval, provided an ideal venue for many sports as the sports club gradually developed it after its construction in the 1970s. The league has designated it as the venue for most of the league's grand finals since the 1980s. Recently, added assistance for the staging of the grand final through regional promotion and in-kind sponsorship has been provided by the Albury City Council.

In 1983, after an unsuccessful debut season playing for Hawthorn the previous year, Gary Ablett played for Myrtleford in the O&M for a year, before he was recruited by Geelong where he recommenced his career in the VFL/AFL and established himself as one of the code's best players in many people's opinion.

By the late 1980s, the Wodonga Demons of the Tallangatta League had made a number of bids to join the O&M, and in 1989 were accepted into the competition to serve the west of the city of Wodonga, based at Birralee Park. They changed their name to the Wodonga Raiders Football Club so as to not cause confusion with the Benalla Demons and the long established Wodonga Football Club.

[edit] The 1990 Bloodbath Grand Final

Shortly after the commencement of the 1990 O&M grand final between Wodonga and Lavington, played at the Albury Sportsground, most of the players of the two teams became involved in an all-in brawl. As the game was televised by a local TV station, the footage received sensationalistic national media coverage where the brawl was generally described as a shocking indictment on the code. Even though over a decade had elapsed, comparisons to this incident were made after the 2004 AFL Cairns Grand Final descended into a similar fracas. [1]

Wodonga eventually won the match by 20 points and thus the premiership, and the league tribunal handed out a number of lengthy suspensions to players from both sides for the following season. Incidentally, the result marked the second premiership for Wodonga's coach of that time, Jeff Gieschen, his first for the club being in 1987, before he went on to coach West Perth and then an ill-fated stint at Richmond in 1997-1999.

[edit] Recent Years

In 1996, after a string of unsuccessful seasons in the O&M, Benalla moved to the Goulburn Valley Football League. In 2000 the Penrith Panthers Leagues Club, financiers of the Penrith Panthers NRL team, merged with the Lavington Sports Club. As a result, the Lavington Football Club changed their nickname from the Blues to the Panthers, added "Panthers" to their title, and adopted a guernsey in the same colours as the NRL Panthers, but in the Port Adelaide AFL pattern.

Also around this time, the Wagga Tigers Football Club, which had dominated the Riverina Football League, made a bid to join the O&MFL, however, partially due to concerns from the league's southern clubs about travel times, the bid was rejected. The Wagga Tigers then successfully bid to join the ACTAFL.

In 2001 the O&MFL, in a joint venture with the AFL Kangaroos Football Club, fielded a team in the Victorian Football League called the Murray Kangaroos, playing home games at Wangaratta and Lavington. However, due to concerns from O&M clubs about player availability, the Kangaroos about travel time, and poor attendances, the venture was discontinued after one season and the Kangaroos later set up a joint venture with Port Melbourne.

In 2005, the Grand Final between Myrtleford and Lavington drew an official attendance of 14,811.^[1] A record grand final attendance was set for the match between Wangaratta and North Albury or 15,442.^[2]

More successful has been the Murray Bushrangers TAC Cup Under 18s side, who play their home games in Wangaratta; prior to the AFL national draft and the inception of the TAC Cup, young players in the area would usually play through the grades with their local club, with less likelihood of being scouted by the recruitment staff from AFL clubs. Although there has been some concern from clubs about these players being removed from the local competition, the ones that do not get drafted usually return to their home clubs to play locally once they come of age.

Even in that case, there is some chance that a late-maturing "older" player in their early 20s will be drafted by an AFL club. Several notable examples to be drafted directly from the O&MFL include Fraser Gehrig (Wodonga Raiders/West Coast Eagles/St Kilda), Guy Rigoni (Myrtleford/Melbourne) and Brett Kirk (North Albury/Sydney Swans).

[edit] Interleague Competition

The O&M has won the first division of the Victorian Country Football League interleague championship fourteen times, the most recent victory being in 2006. In interleague competition the team wears a gold guernsey, emblazoned with a modern style black and gold "O&M" logo, and black shorts.

[edit] Morris Medal

The Morris Medal is given for the best and fairest player in the O&MFL during the home and away season, similar to the AFL's Brownlow Medal. In the week preceding the grand final, a vote count is held to decide the recipient of the award. player who has won the most Morris Medals is Robbie Walker who won five whilst playing for the Wangaratta Rovers, followed by Jim Sandral (Corowa) and John Brunner (Yarrawonga) with three apiece. The list of Morris Medallists follows:

[edit] Former Clubs

• Border United
• East Albury Football Club
• Benalla Football Club
• Lake Rovers Football Club
• West Albury Football Club
• Weir United Football Club

[edit] References

1. ^ http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:95T5Ul0QPzwJ:www.omfl.com.au/hist_item.html%3Foid%3D1292674%26sectionid%3D0%26sectionname%3DHistory%26parentid%3D0%26parenttitle%3DOM%2520Match%2520Statistics+yarrawonga+premiers+crowd&hl=en&gl=au&ct=clnk&cd=2
2. ^ http://www.alburycity.nsw.gov.au/publications/images/Sporting_News_October_07_Final.pdf

[edit] External links

• Official Ovens and Murray Football League website
• Country Footy Scores O&MFL page
• Footypedia O&MFL page
• OMFL History and Records at Full Points Footy