1982 MID-MURRAY FOOTBALL LEAGUE
SWAN HILL 19.16.130 def. TYNTYNDER 20.8.128
For the ardent local footy fan, late August/ early September is like Christmas. It’s when the smell of freshly cut grass fills the air.
It’s when the warmth of the sun signals summer is around the corner. And it’s when heroes are made, when dreams are crushed and when history is created as yet another chapter is written into football folklore.
As we prepare for return of finals football – the first since 2019 – it’s also an opportune time to look back on the deeds of legends past, in another edition of The Guardian’s four-part series – Footy Finals Flashback. In the lead-up to this year’s premiership decider, we will revisit four memorable days in Mid-Murray/Central Murray Football League history – starting with Swan Hill’s 12th senior premiership – and the only Grand Final where the losing side kicked more goals than the winners – the 1982 thriller.
Swan Hill and Tyntynder have had a long and storied history – particularly when it comes to finals. But perhaps there is no more remarkable game between these two proud clubs than the 1982 decider, one which hung in the balance until the final moments of the match – and in turn signalled the start of a fierce rivalry between the two teams.
Tyntynder were one of the yardsticks of the competition, having played in the past two Grand Finals. It was a widely held belief heading into the 1982 season that the Bulldogs would be the team to beat – which proved to be the case, finishing on top of the ladder with 14 wins, two losses.
One of those losses came at the hands of the Swans back in Round 7 – which was by just two points, the same margin that would befall both teams 14 weeks later. The hero that day was Peter Craig, whose goal after the siren handed their arch rivals their second loss for the season to that point – the Bulldogs’ last defeat until Grand Final day.
With both Tyntynder and Swan Hill (12 wins, 2 losses) topping the ladder, the stage was set for another classic encounter in the second semi-final. What started out as a close affair soon turned into a nightmare for the Swans, as their cross-town rivals piled on 20 goals for the game to record a comfortable 50-point victory – and move straight through to the Grand Final.
That loss set the scene for a match that was almost as memorable as the Grand Final itself, with the young Swans facing Balranald in a Preliminary Final. While Swan Hill went on to record a dominant 80-point victory, it is still a game that is remembered to this day – albeit for all the wrong the reasons, as Swan Hill ruckman Vince Foott later recalled.
“We played Balranald the week before and they were going to belt us and smash us, but we were ready for it – as soon as Glen Nolan bounced the ball, we knew it was going to be on,” Foott said.
“Peter Stevens broke ‘Billy’ Moore’s jaw in the ruck and Billy never played after that.”
Noel Watson was playing in his first season with Swan Hill, having moved to town after playing with Newbridge in the Loddon Valley Football League, where he won the Frank Harding Medal two seasons earlier. Watson remembered that day as one of the fiercest game’s he’s ever played in.
“It was on for young and old that day – there were blokes going down everywhere,” Watson said.
“It was absurd in that one side was playing footy and the other wasn’t, it just got way, way out of hand, hence the final margin.”
“I mean, there was a police car on the oval at the end of the game to get the umpires off the ground it got that out of hand.”
Watson’s memory is spot on, with a local divisional van required to safely escort umpire K.Khan from the field at the end of the match. Foott remembered the moment when football and the law intertwined – all because of one particular incident that is still regaled by those who witnessed it 40 years ago.
“The umpires used to come from Melbourne in those days and I remember Stephen Bax whacked him in the third quarter,” Foott said.
“They opened the gates over where the old scoreboard was and this Commodore flew onto the ground like something out of the TV show Cop Shop.”
“It was one of those old Division Four cop cars with the little siren stuck on top – they flung the doors open and the umpires couldn’t get in there quick enough – it happened right over on the other side of the ground over on the forward flank, they just snuck off without anyone knowing.”
It wasn’t the only incident that day that involved Foott, with the Swans ruckman requiring treatment of his own after an incident early in the match.
“There was this all-in blue in front of the footy sheds during the first quarter – I got king-hit from behind and Doctor Briggs took me down to the hospital in his old EH Holden and stitched me up, brought me back to the ground, then sent me back out there and I kept playing after that,” Foott said.
While Balranald may have won the fight – or more accurately fights – Swan Hill won the war, with the Swans going through to meet Tyntynder the following weekend in the Grand Final. The Bulldogs would go into the game as white-hot favourites on the back of 11 straight wins and with one of the strongest teams assembled in Mid-Murray Football League history.
One element of the Swan Hill team that wasn’t factored in was their senior coach Neil ‘Potter’ Evans and his remarkable ability to motivate his team. Evans, who was in his first season as senior coach, often had his players eating out of the palm of his hand and ready to run through brick walls, according to Watson.
“I know we went in as underdogs because we got beaten by eight or nine goals in the semi,” Watson said.
“I remember that ‘Potter’ – who as everyone knows is a pretty positive person – saw it as just a matter of picking us up and rebuilding our confidence after that loss.”
“If you looked at it in today’s footy, we had the talls, we had the outside run and really it was just about trying to get our heads around the fact that we were playing a bloody good side in Tyntynder – they’d beaten us up, but for us it was about getting everyone right on that one day.”
Evans was no stranger to leading Swan Hill to glory on Grand Final day, having 12 months earlier coached the club’s Under 17s team to a premiership. One of the players who played in that Under 17s flag was star onballer Trevor Larkins, who was in the midst of just his second season of senior football.
Larkins would go on to play with Richmond in the VFL three years later, with Evans having a major impact on his footballing journey.
“There were about four or five guys who played in that ’81 Under 17s flag that doubled up with the seniors under ‘Potter’ the next year,” Larkins said.
“His (Evans) sports rehab and sports mind was 30 years ahead of his time – he taught me how to not only train hard but also how to rehab.”
“He was more than a coach, he was mentor for me because I valued what he did for me – I was always super fit, but that only came about because of ‘Potter’ and the work he did with me.”
“He’s a great man and everyone at the club respected him and loved him and I had him at the top of my list, too.”
Despite Swan Hill enjoying the majority of the play, it was Tyntynder who took the early ascendency, with five straight goals in the opening term seeing them open up a 14-point lead at quarter time. With the Bulldogs quick out of the gates, the Swans could have been easily forgiven for thinking history was repeating – that was until the cool head of the Swans coach took over, according to Watson.
“The message at the break was just take a breath, it wasn’t like ‘oh my god, they’re going to run all over us and blast us away again’ – we were in the game, it was just a matter of calming things down and playing closer to your man, which we did,” Watson said.
“‘Potter’ wasn’t ranting and raving, he was still pretty calm, even though we were nearly three goals down.”
For the 30-odd minutes that followed, it was all one-way traffic, as Swan Hill piled on ten goals in the second quarter to open up a 22-point lead by the main break. Vince Foott took control of the match in the ruck, with Vin Dullard, Peter Craig, Noel Watson and Trevor Larkins creating havoc around the ground.
It was more of the same in the third term, with Swan Hill extending their lead to what many thought to be an unassailable 38-points by the final change. While the Swans appeared destined to forge ahead to the most unlikely of premierships, there was one moment in the third quarter that changed the course of the match, according to Larkins.
“I remember ‘Vinny’ Dullard getting knocked out by big ‘Camo’ (Rob Cameron),” Larkins said.
“I remember ‘Vinny’ saying in the lead-up to the game that all he wanted to do was stand up on the dais as the premiership captain and hold the cup aloft – and he didn’t get the chance to do it.”
“He was such a courageous player, though – he was our leader and we certainly wouldn’t have got there without him and he always led by example.”
Watson also recalls the incident well, although with a slightly different twist in the tale.
“I don’t know if Gary Blencowe will own up to it or not, but rather sheepishly I think, he was the one who kicked the ball to ‘Vinny’,” Watson said.
“He (Gary) describes it to this day as a pinpoint, hard, low kick – while everyone else describes it as a kick in hope, put it up there and see who can stay under it long enough – and unfortunately for ‘Vinny’ that was him and it was pretty quickly lights out.”
“It was big ‘Camo’ that hit him and he wouldn’t be someone you’d like to run into, he would have hit hard.”
With Dullard off the ground with concussion and on the back of a taxing preliminary final the week before, the Swans started to tire early in the last. Sensing it was now-or-never, the Bulldogs threw everything at their arch rivals in a quarter of football that’s still talked about to this day.
Led by Tyntynder’s captain-coach Neil McLennan and Daryl Powell, the Bulldogs began to peg back the margin as the Swans players stopped to a walk. With their lead cut to just 17 points mid-way through the final quarter, the Swan Hill hierarchy needed somebody to step up to the plate – with Stephen Foott suggesting the end result was all due to one man in particular.
“Kevin Adams run off the half back line and snuck forward a couple of times in that last quarter and kicked a couple of goals at the end when it was certainly required,” Foott said.
“We needed someone to stand up and do something special at that point because we were just treading water at that point – and he was the one who stepped up and won it for us, in my opinion.”
With Adams pushing the margin back out to 28 points, it again looked as if the match was in Swan Hill’s keeping. But Tyntynder once again had other ideas. Two quick goals had the margin back to 14 points in the blink of an eye – and when Shane Blackman kicked his second goal of the game with a left-foot snap, it was just eight points the difference.
Vince Foott recalls that final quarter and the panic that slowly started to creep in as their opposition kept pressing over those dying minutes.
“We stopped to a walk after three-quarter time – I couldn’t believe it really,” Foott said.
“We all wondered what was going on, but Tyntynder were a pretty good side and I suppose we took the foot of the pedal a little bit thinking we had it won and they just kept coming.”
With just three minutes left on the clock, the Bulldogs again pushed forward, with a pinpoint Daryl Powell pass finding Steve Matthews for his sixth goal of the day – and all of a sudden, the margin was just two-points the difference.
Watson remembers those dying moments like it was yesterday, with the Grand Final hanging in the balance and both teams scrambling for the ball in a desperate attempt to win the game for their side.
“The ball was on the centre wing at one stage and everyone was yelling out not long, not long and I was thinking ‘how long was not long?’” Watson said.
“We’d done everything we possibly could and we just run out of gas – having said that, all credit to Tyntynder because they didn’t give up, they’re a proud club and were very good in that last quarter.”
“When the siren went, I just dropped to my knees because I was done, I was absolutely exhausted.”
“I remember going into the rooms afterwards and we all sang the song and there would have been eight or ten blokes just sitting, just absolutely physically done – they got going again later on in the night, of course – but just the whole emotion of being in front, and then that close battle at the end before winning by a couple of points was just absolutely draining.”
It was a similar feeling for Vince Foott, who also had the joy of playing in that side with his brother, Stephen – their first of many senior premierships together with Swan Hill.
“It was a mixture of relief and elation, especially being my first one, too,” Foott said.
“Once it was over though, it was just pure joy – everyone was just happy back in the sheds and the beer was flowing.”
“You worked hard in those days and you partied hard as well, that was your outlet – footy was everything, it meant everything to me and to have played in a premiership was just so special.”
While Swan Hill claimed victory that day, it was the start of a five-year run of Grand Finals between the two clubs – with Tyntynder exacting their revenge on their cross-town rivals 12 months later with the first of three premierships between 1983 and 1986. But no matter how many the Bulldogs won over their traditional foe – nothing would make up for the heartbreak of the one that got away in 1982.
