FOOTBALL
GIPPSLAND LEAGUE
By LIAM DURKIN
IT’S hard to beat someone who never gives up.
It’s even harder when there is 20 of them.
Morwell players had every reason to give up in the last quarter of the 1985 Gippsland League Grand Final.
The Tigers were 35 points down at the 10-minute mark of the final term, before staging the most dramatic, and improbable comeback ever seen in Gippsland, or country Victorian football for that matter.
The final scoreboard itself speaks of the sheer avalanche of goals Morwell produced: 20.15 (135) to 17.7 (109).
Such a score line normally indicates a comfortable-enough victory, yet as events surrounding the main attraction played out, it became clear this was something phenomenal.
In 40 years since, there has never been a game like it.
There may well never be anything that eclipses it as long as the game is played.
Morwell themselves have won their share of unlikely flags. You only have to go back a little more than a decade when the Tigers of 2013 rolled a red hot Sale.
Yet for a sheer, against-the-odds, miraculous premiership victory, there is surely nothing that can top 1985.
To confirm it wasn’t a dream, Morwell players and officials from that season gathered recently to reflect four decades on.
Among the contingent was David Vogel, who in 1985 was a 27-year-old car salesman with more than 100 games under his belt.
By that stage he’d already won two Trood Award and Rodda Medals as the best player in the Gippsland League, and was on his way to a best afield display in the Grand Final.
Vogel remembers a packed Ted Summerton Reserve, Moe, who paid $17,540 at the gate (worth more than $50,000 today) for the showdown between the Latrobe Valley’s two biggest rivals.
He also remembers Morwell supporters beating the traffic, leaving the ground as the last quarter unfolded.
“I got a lift back after the game from a guy that was halfway home back to Morwell. (He) heard it on the radio, (and) came back,” Vogel said.
“We were a fair bit down but we were still positive. It’s a cliché but never give up. (We) just got on a roll, Alan Lowe and Steve Sanders, centre half forward/full forward started to dominate in the last quarter, and our running players went from there.
“Any Grand Final is fantastic to win, but we were shot ducks at the time, that’s what makes it quite unique, to come from that far back to win.”
Morwell’s road to the decider was tough enough. The Tigers had to go the long way after finishing third on the home-and-away ladder with 17 wins.
That in itself shows just how more cutthroat the competition was back then. Seventeen wins today would just about guarantee the minor premiership.
Not so in 1985, as a very long season of 22 games was required to accommodate the 12 competing teams during the league’s halcyon days. Churchill, Newborough, Yallourn Yallourn North and Traralgon Tyers United all competed in the major league during this time – an unimaginable thought today.
The Tigers went into finals without the luxury of the double chance, and only just pipped Leongatha by three points in the first semi-final.
A precursor to the drama that unfolded two weeks later was felt when leading Morwell forward John Featherston was ousted.
Featherston had kicked more than 100 goals for the season, yet did not play again following the semi-final.
In came Sanders from the reserves, who ended up playing arguably the best fortnight of his life, kicking five goals in the preliminary final, and half-a-dozen in the big dance.
Talk about being in the right place at the right time.
That Morwell ended up kicking 10 unanswered goals without the competition’s leading forward available for the Grand Final only added to its insanity.
While the Tigers won the preliminary final by 49 points against Warragul, even then it was a comeback victory.
Morwell trailed by 16 points at halftime, yet banged on 12 goal to one after the main break to send the Gulls packing in straight sets.
“Warragul was the best side,” Vogel said of the 1984 reigning premier.
Little was anyone to know such a rate of goals and the frequency at which the Tigers kicked them would prove so decisive.
Adding to the subplots was the fact Morwell playing-coach Peter Hall was recalled for the preliminary final – the same Hall who’d coached Traralgon to five grand finals, including in the previous season.
Hall, who went on to enjoy a lengthy career as The Nationals state member for Gippsland/Eastern Victoria, was perhaps well served to do so given the political backlash that would have surrounded his move from the Maroons to the arch-enemy.
Another familiar name featured in the Tigers line-up in a young Rob Dickson. Dickson was already a premiership winner for Morwell in 1983, and was looking to the next year when the 1985 Grand Final rolled around, signalling his intention to try his luck in the big league with Hawthorn.
Dickson played 17 games for the Hawks between 1988 and 1990, at a time when senior opportunity was incredibly difficult to come by given the club’s success (premierships in ’88-’89). He then headed north to the newly-formed Brisbane Bears, while working on his craft as a filmmaker.
His untimely death in 2009 shocked the football world, although his legacy lives on today through Dickson Films, headed by his brother, and fellow Morwell local Peter.
Rob was commissioned by the AFL to produce a documentary on the 150th anniversary of Australian Rules Football in 2008: The Essence of the Game, regarded as one of the best AFL documentary’s ever created.
If a documentary is ever made on the ’85 Gippsland League Grand Final, it may well examine just how Traralgon managed to lose.
On the quarter-by-quarter scores at least, while the Maroons held decent leads at each of the breaks, they were by no means completely safe.
Traralgon led by 17 points at quarter time, 22 at the half, and 27 heading into the last.
While a five goal lead should have been enough in a Grand Final, it was a close enough deficit to reel in, especially in a game that was relatively high-scoring.
A few other hidden factors might have also contributed. The Tigers had defeated the Maroons in a high-scoring Round 11 match, putting up 23.4 (142) on that occasion, and didn’t play Traralgon in any of the finals, which perhaps added a surprise element when they met on Grand Final day.
This was also a time when the emphasis on defence was nowhere near the level it is today. Morwell averaged 120 points for in season 1985, one of five teams to average triple figure scores each week.
For Rob Popplestone, one of the 20 vanquished Traralgon players that day, he felt Morwell’s comeback came down to momentum, and a stroke of some good fortune.
“It was quite incredible, the turnaround, the next five minutes, it was like a dream where everything went in slow motion,” he said in a 2022 interview with the Herald Sun.
“I remember Doggy Vogel (David) running past me and all of a sudden they got a little bit of momentum. They were kicking goals from places you don’t kick goals. You talk about Eddie Betts, you talk about young Daicos (Nick), they’re nothing on the goals this side was kicking.
“They were amazing goals. If you weren’t on the opposition it was a good five minutes of footy to watch. Most of us (Traralgon players) unfortunately were watching it.”
Vogel admitted to the freakish nature of a couple of the goals, and felt they provided moments when he thought Morwell could go on and win.
“When Rod Kerr kicked a goal in the goal square on his left foot, Peter Henderson snapped one over his shoulder from the boundary line, and then ‘bang’ away we went,” he said.
Popplestone was among the best players for the Maroons, and kicked what most assumed would be the sealer in the last quarter.
“There was no question we’d won the Grand Final,” he said after he’d put Traralgon so far in front.
“I still remember grabbing that ball, ‘Bones’ Johnson tapped it down, I took it cleanly, had a couple of yards on Brett Hayes, the ball off the boot looked fantastic. I could hear Graeme Eddy in the commentary go ‘that goal from Popplestone, he’s the match winner’, and I ran back to the centre thinking ‘yeah, we’ve won it here. How can we be beaten?’.”
For their part in the dance of the dismal, Popplestone said Traralgon players were totally stunned.
“The final siren went and we sort of looked at each other like ‘did that happen? Did we lose the unlosable Grand Final?’.”
Conversely, Vogel simply said “the euphoria was unbelievable.”
Now living on the Gold Coast, Vogel still keeps close tabs with Morwell Football-Netball Club, where he played close to 200 games.
Despite playing and coaching elsewhere around the traps for many years since, ’85 remains his only premiership, and an obvious career highlight (if you are only going to win one flag, this is a good one to have on your CV).
He says the Morwell team of that time are his “closest mates”, with the bond existing all these years on.
The celebrations might still be going as well.
The final quarter of the 1985 Gippsland League Grand Final can be watched on YouTube.
