When Ronnie Fenton and Arthur Taylor started playing for the Winnaleah Football Club, their match payment was a Jersey cow, a load of wood or some spuds.
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That was more than 50 years ago.
They played for the love of the game, the community spirit, and the friendship. But now, the feeling around the town on a Saturday is very different.
“It’s just dead,” Mr Taylor said.
Last year, the North East Football Union folded. The Magpies were left as the only team in the league when Scottsdale Crows called time, and their bid to join the NTFA was rejected late last year.
For the past 12 months, the town has had zero games of football played on its well-kept ground.
But on Saturday, the club is hosting a likely farewell, and saying goodbye to the league it has been a part of for more than 113 years.
The Winnaleah ground will host a Northern Tasmanian Football Association game, between Bridgenorth and George Town.
The latter is the club where a lot of Winnaleah’s players relocated to when the NEFU folded.
Back in the day
While the game Mr Fenton and Mr Taylor played 50 years ago was a very different one to what they will watch on Saturday, the supporters’ and players’ passion for the club and game strongly remains.
“I got involved in the club in 1971. I was interviewed when I just arrived in town in 1970,” Mr Taylor said.
“The then-president of the club came and pestered me for a week when I moved here. He was asking me if I was going to play for Winnaleah. I was a shop keeper and he was worried that I was going to play somewhere else.”
He said the club meant a lot to him ever since.
“We’d train Wednesdays, play Saturdays and talk Saturday night … and sometimes into Sunday morning,” he joked.
Mr Fenton said being involved was just expected, with training on Sundays a standard event.
“I started when I was 15, I only lived down the gully. Football was just what you did. I just loved it,” he said.
“We don’t do that now, but there used to be a barrel of beer, it’d be gone pretty quickly because everyone used to turn up. You wouldn’t get drunk because you’d only get one or two beers each.”
While the duo have more memories than they’re willing to share, winning three back-to-back premierships was a highlight.
“Without the football club, we’ll be lost. I don’t reckon we’ll be travelling around to watch other clubs. We’ll just stay at home,” Mr Taylor said.
Football Vibes
Marie Rainbow said the loss of the club had been noticed throughout the town.
“The thing I miss the most are the kids going past on a Wednesday afternoon going to training,” she said.
“There were stories of them kicking the ball out on the road, the police used to get a little irate, I remember windows getting broken. Things like that will never happen again.”
All generations
More than five generations of one Winnaleah family have grown up at the town’s football club.
A number of them plan to pull their boots on for the Pies one last time on Saturday.
Jackson Shaw, who started playing with the Bridport Football Club when the NEFU folded, is one of the ones making a return for the final goodbye.
Mr Shaw requested a clearance from his new club when he heard of the farewell plans.
“I’ve been playing here since I was five. This is basically all I’ve known. It’s bred in you to play footy here,” he said.
“It’ll be good to be back playing here for possibly the last time with the boys and try and get that feeling back.”
The club’s current vice president Kirk Wagner has been playing at the club since 1993, and cannot imagine Winnaleah without its football club.
“I don’t really like to think about what it’s going to be like without it,” he said. “It’s just not going to be good.”
Mr Wagner said playing for a small club hadn’t always been easy.
“I remember back in 2000, we didn’t win a game all year until the very last game of the season,” he said.
“But, that was one of the best years I’ve ever had. It was just a bunch of good blokes trying to have a kick.”
The Final Sirens
Kirk’s dad Frank Wagner played with the Pies until he was in his 40s, and would not have had it any other way.
It is the first year, for as long as he can remember, that he has not attended a football game all season.
“[On Saturday] I think there will be a lot of people just hanging out for it because they’ve done nothing all year,” he said.
“I know myself that I haven’t been to a football match and I won’t go to another. I don’t think the NTFA understands that at all.”
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The number of mental health issues in the community will rise in the future without the football club, he believes.
“I tend to just go to work on a Saturday now. I know a lot of other farmers around here aren’t getting off their farms now either. They just stay at home,” he said.
Four games will be held at the ground on Saturday, starting with an under 12s game at 8.30am. The under 18s game will start about 10am, with the reserves to follow. The seniors game will start about 2pm.
Club officials are holding out hope for the club to continue, but it appears likely that Pies’ sirens will sound for the final time on Saturday afternoon.
“It could be a farewell to the football club, but it’s definitely a farewell to the NEFU,” Kirk Wagner said.
Without the football club, we’ll be lost. I don’t reckon we’ll be travelling around to watch other clubs. We’ll just stay at home.
- Arthur Taylor
Journalist at The Examiner Newspaper
Journalist at The Examiner Newspaper
