News
Two warring footy bodies: the Bendigo League and the Bendigo Association
News
Two warring footy bodies: the Bendigo League and the Bendigo Association
Published on:
04 February 2025
Our two warring footy bodies: the Bendigo League and the Bendigo Association
Bendigo football recovered strongly in the decades after the two World Wars so it's interesting to look back a lifetime ago to see what was happening locally.
In 1947 journalist Jim Blake, who wrote for the old 'pink paper', the Sporting Globe, had been sent by his editor to cover two matches in Bendigo.
As a working journo I know Blake wouldn't have been able to cover two matches. Perhaps half-a-game at each venue.
To start with, the Globe writer was at the QEO. It was the King's Birthday weekend and the BFL representative team was matched up against Hawthorn.
Now in the immediate post-war years the Hawks were nothing like the side of current decades. Along with St Kilda they were down at the bottom of the then VFL ladder just about every season.
Blake estimated the crowd at 3000 in the Upper Reserve with the spacious grandstand filled to capacity.
Although the local BFL representative side went down to the Hawks and he reported the home fans 'weren't happy' -- when he checked in later.
And so where did he go at half-time? Well, Blake headed out to the Wade Street oval in Golden Square to see a second representative match.
The Bendigo Football Association side was playing the VFA side, coached by Sandringham's Len Toyne. He was known as the "throw pass poster boy."
Back then the throw-pass was part of VFA footy. No need to rest the pill on one palm and punch it clear with the closed fist of the other.
No, a two-fisted throw as players in rugby league and rugby union do, only the ball could go forwards in VFA not behind the player's body as in those two rugby codes --- back then and now.
So let footy writer and historian Xavier Fowler take up the story of Blake's Bendigo appearances.
"Jim Blake walked along the outer area of the Golden Square football ground as a biting wind kicked up dust from the nearby mullock heaps.
"Located on the outskirts of Bendigo, the Golden Square ground offered a stark contrast to the grand colonial townhouses and public buildings that had prompted architect William Vahland to designate Bendigo 'the Vienna of the South'.
"The playing surface was rough (not like the carefully curated Wade Street oval of today) and the lack of any grandstand exposed visiting patrons to the harsh conditions of the Bendigo Valley.
"It was certainly not conducive to getting a crowd to stand for two-and-a-half hours in the open," Blake reported in the Globe.
Nonetheless a healthy crowd of 1500 patrons were happily braving the winter chill as the VFA versus the Bendigo Football Association was played and the BFA (later the Golden City F.L.) downed the might of their parent body.
This time Blake wrote that the spectators went home happy.
Author Fowler notes that Bendigo was "a footy town divided and had been since 1938."
"The BFL had the higher ground but a victor's malaise was setting in. 'We want more assistance from the VFL,' complained its president J.J.Moran.
It received no funding from Harrison House HQ while club scouts from the VFL seduced its best players into coming to Melbourne "without gratification or financial compensation" from the big VFL clubs.
"Why, we even had to pay Hawthorn 50 pounds to play here on the holiday Monday and that match was designed to foster football in Bendigo,'" Mr Moran said.
"Footscray are coming up later and that will be another 50 pounds."
So author Fowler makes some interesting observations of his own.
"Rather than snigger, the BFL could only look on its cross-town rival, the BFA, with envy.
"Once the district's ugly duckling , the BFA was now booming under the throw-pass code. In two years five clubs had become 10 while club dividends had increased five-fold.
"A weary BFL chief Moran had become convinced that peace was needed to restore the natural order.
"There should be no division of football here. It is ridiculous that in Victoria, the headquarters of the Australian game, we have various codes with different rules," he told the Advertiser.
"There must be a coming together and a mutual giving and taking.'
As author Fowler observed again: 'Moran's efforts came to little use. Peace efforts had failed and neither side was prepared to blink.
"The real war had come to an end across the globe but the football war in central Victoria raged on."
And as we all know the amalgamation of our two local leagues was not achieved until 1980-81 when a two division structure came in under the banner of the Bendigo Golden City Football League.
Courtesy of Xavier Fowler -- The Football War: the VFA and VFL's battle for Supremacy (2024).
