Supermercado
The straw that stirs the drink
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1890 - player outraged by betting allegations will retire as soon as his other bet is decided.
Research Random Footy History article thread (Trove/Google etc)
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Twenty people, two dogs and one quirky sport keep this small town kicking
The Silo Kick is Mirrool's claim to fame, but the annual event does more than crown the biggest kicker of a football in the New South Wales Riverina town.
www.abc.net.au
what happened to robbie mills?
has he been written out of the story?
Where legends are made
brian stanislaus in the third row?
dec 1980ish
dec 1980ish
Gibbsy
Moderator
- Moderator
- #404
Twenty people, two dogs and one quirky sport keep this small town kicking
The Silo Kick is Mirrool's claim to fame, but the annual event does more than crown the biggest kicker of a football in the New South Wales Riverina town.
what happened to robbie mills?
has he been written out of the story?
Where legends are made
www.theage.com.au
Probably a combination of a lack of research and his efforts being lost to time (if none of the locals who retold the story in that ABC article could either recall or it or chose not to recall).
I did find this recent FB comment online which shows at least one person out there still remembers Mills' feats – now, to track down a copy of that Aussie Post...
Bull on Field
trove.nla.gov.au
FOOTBALL SENSATIONS. - BULL CLEARS THE FIELD. PLAYERS AND SPECTATORS RUN. SHELTER IN DRESSING SHED. - The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1957) - 11 May 1914
The last quarter of the football match at Clayton on Saturday will go down into history as one of the most exciting ever witnessed on the Victorian football field. A ...
trove.nla.gov.au
Sporting Life All Australians 1951
Amscol predicting a win for Jack O in the battle of the Premiers 1974
Australia Day Game 1987
Cream of Victorian Football
March 1971 West Torrens v Nth Melbourne
March 1971 West Torrens v Nth Melbourne
Fair to say the "Cream of Victorian Football" bit was somewhat over the top, with North having "won" the Wooden Spoon the previous year (with just 4 wins)!! They improved to 9th in 1971, but still only won 5 games and drew one, so not much cream there at all!
Communication problems
Football Life July 1971
Looks like everyone thrashed them in '71
en.wikipedia.org
Football Life July 1971
Looks like everyone thrashed them in '71
1971 VFL season - Wikipedia
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Lake Tyers V Carlton
Suppose it is the Melbourne Carlton
Suppose it is the Melbourne Carlton
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Booming kick apparently 1929
Risky behavour 1952
trove.nla.gov.au
Dog bites Umpire 1935
Risky behavour 1952
FOOTBALL BRAWLS - Man jumps fence and hits Fraser - Sporting Globe (Melbourne, Vic. : 1922 - 1954) - 5 Jul 1952
Brawls colored today’s League football. At Collingwood a spectator jumped the fence in the last quarter and running 50 yards into the playing arena, hit Don Fraser, Richmond defender, from behind. ...
trove.nla.gov.au
Dog bites Umpire 1935
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must a put somethng in his weetabix
Coodabeen Champions bow out of broadcasting after 43 years leaving an unlikely legacy
From skewering the football industry to finding themselves oddly ensconced within it, the Coodabeen Champions bow out of broadcasting with a remarkable and unlikely legacy.
www.abc.net.au
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2005 Legendary Team – Scottsdale Team of 1973 | AFL Tasmania Hall of Fame
afltashalloffame.com.au
Scottsdale's team at the 1973 carnival
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ATTEMPT To WRECK FOOTBALL TRAIN - Sporting Globe (Melbourne, Vic. : 1922 - 1954) - 16 May 1936
That football enjoyed popularity 50 years ago, and attracted crowds equal to those of today, is proved by turning back ...
trove.nla.gov.au
ATTEMPT TO WRECK A TRAIN. - Geelong Advertiser (Vic. : 1859 - 1929) - 7 Sep 1886
A diabolical attempt to wreck a tram was made on the Geelong and Ballarat railway line in the neighborhood of Laverton some time during Friday eight, hut fortunately ...
trove.nla.gov.au
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I recokn Jacko might have been a bit hard done by
You tube
You tube
After losing by 400+ points this club considered folding. What they did next united a community
A football team that spent the past two years getting beaten by hundreds of points found itself with a choice to make — give up, or go all in. With a renewed focus on community, families have now returned to the club, so too a sense of hope.
www.abc.net.au
Pix 1962
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Gibbsy
Moderator
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- #420
Was doing a little bit of research on the former Lake Tyers Aboriginal football club and found this fascinating tale of their unfortunate demise, where they were controversially expelled from the East Gippsland FL ahead of the 1998 season.
Field of dreams
Ian Cockerill
The Sunday Age, 4 April 1998
THERE are almost too many versions of what happened that day in the dreamy village of Buchan to recount. What is not in dispute is that the blood spilt was bad blood.
Tucked inconspicuously into the folds of the lower Victorian Alps, Buchan lies four hours east of Melbourne. To reach the scene of events, you turn right just past beckoning signs to the village's premier tourist attraction, Buchan Caves. Almost immediately you are alongside a low, crooked wood and wire fence marking the extent of the Buchan Recreation Reserve. A sign cautioning "No Livestock Allowed" is nailed beside the gate. At the far end, set against shorn hills, is a screeching, smoking sawmill - the source, it can be assumed, of the logs set around the boundaries of the football ground. This is the home of the Cavemen.
This is where the melee took place on 15 June 1996. In the time since it has taken on the qualities of a Rorschach test. Everyone saw something different. The local - collated - version begins in the first quarter with a player from the visiting Lake Tyers footy team punching a Buchan opponent "minutes" after the ball has gone, turning his cheekbone into a bad jigsaw. Tempers rise until the final quarter, when a Tyers player "almost decapitates" a Buchan player in front of the coach's box. A Buchan player comes to the defence of his stricken teammate. A nearby Tyers player joins in. A drunken female Tyers supporter, waving a stubbie, runs on to the ground to remonstrate with Buchan players before punching and spitting at a female Buchan supporter. A Tyers player, without provocation, sprints over to the Buchan coach on the boundary and barrels into him. When a Buchan player goes to his coach's aid, he is attacked by two Tyers players who had come off injured and changed into street clothes. He later requires seven stitches to his face. The teams and sections of the crowd get involved, up to 50 altogether. Later, as the Tyers people leave town, they hurl bottles out car windows and threaten to get square when Buchan visits their ground. One bloke who has been in an army brawl insists it was nothing compared to this.
The Tyers folk tell another story. The player with the smashed cheekbone? That happened when one of their players delivered a legitimate hip-and-shoulder and he slid head-first on wet ground into a log. As for the incident that sparked the melee, that was a fair tackle.
And things only really exploded when one of the Buchan fans leapt out of his car and kicked the Tyers runner in the groin. When one of the Tyers supporters got involved, all hell broke loose.
This might have been a regulation country football brawl but for the fact that Lake Tyers, with one or two exceptions, is an Aboriginal team.
Or rather, was. Just two years after being invited to join the Omeo District Football League, Tyers has been tossed out. A community has been shamed and, in this part of East Gippsland at least, reconciliation seems as far away as ever. With such a price, the question must be asked: Is there only one side to blame here?
Fifteen minutes up the Princes Highway from the tourist town of Lakes Entrance is the discreet turn-off to the Lake Tyers Aboriginal Trust. Tyers, as everyone calls it, began life as a church mission last century before being passed on to an iron-fisted welfare board. Barely 30 years ago residents were still being handed rations and marched to the showers. Such humiliations were leavened somewhat by the setting. The church, always good realtors, had chosen a spot where verdant hills roll into serene Lake Tyers. "A magic place," agrees league secretary Ian Forbes.
Magic it may be, but for most of its existence it has been a place of profound isolation for its inhabitants. A quarantined curiosity that reinforced the sense of separateness between black and white. Those barriers were briefly eroded when Tyers formed a football team in the 1930s and won two East Gippsland Football League premierships before the decade was out. But by 1950 the team had folded and Tyers once again retreated within itself. When the welfare board finally handed the community control of its own affairs the 200-odd residents chose to maintain a distance. They made their own mudbricks. They slaughtered their own cattle for meat. They only came to the notice of their neighbors on shopping visits to Lakes Entrance and when some made boisterous visits to the pub. It was convenient for those same neighbors to believe that whites weren't welcome on trust land.
The cost of boredom born of isolation was there for all to see, particularly among Tyers' youth. Petty crime, vandalism and amphetamine use escalated in the absence of meaningful activities. Without any visitors, the sporting oval was rarely used. The keenest footballers joined district clubs, but there was nothing the Tyers community could call their own. Until the Omeo District Football League came along.
This is a village league made up of eye-blink timber and farming towns scattered across the district's hills. Distances are reduced by shared beliefs that greenies are bad, the National Party is good and football is the glue that holds everything together. "A way of living," as one club president put it, that brings isolated communities together on winter weekends so that they can call on friends when the summer fires arrive.
They've been coming together in this spirit for more than 100 years. They hail from the high-country towns up the Great Alpine Road, a treacherous, winding strip of bitumen that discourages unnecessary travel. There's Benambra, Omeo, Swifts Creek and Ensay. Back down the long-gutted valley lies Bruthen, while Buchan sits out on a limb at the base of the Snowy Mountains National Park.
Money is tight, so the football and netball clubs combine draws. Player numbers are just as tight, and the seniors are forced to play 16-a-side. Still, the numbers don't always stack up. After one round in 1995 the Ensay club had to call it a day. The task of finding a replacement club fell to league president and Swifts Creek electrical contractor Jack Richardson. As a former player and coach at the Creek - where his son Steve is president and occasional player - Richardson knew the list of candidates was short. But he had always seen different possibilities to most of his neighbors. More than 30 years in this part of the country hadn't shaken the strange ideas he acquired growing up in Melbourne. Like voting Labor. And seeing Lake Tyers as a potential league club. It took just one phone call to establish that the people at Tyers had been waiting for this invitation for nearly 50 years.
Not everybody on the league's board shared the president's enthusiasm. Jim Flannagan, a respected cattleman and skilled horseman, had devoted nearly five decades to the Omeo club as a player, delegate and president. Now he used his influence on the board to argue that Tyers be put on a one-year probation. Although supported by the Buchan delegates, the others recoiled from appearing to judge Tyers before it played a game. The debate was resolved when it was pointed out that the clubs had the power to eject one of their number at any time.
There weren't many people at Tyers who could remember better news. But there was trepidation, too. Committees had to be formed, football and netball players recruited, uniforms selected, registrations processed . . . the list went on. Only a few people had any experience in such matters. Out of those Mick Edwards, a man with a winning personality and a long footballing pedigree, was elected club president. The untried Rohan Morris was elected as secretary and the club's second league delegate.
The football club gathered players for its senior and under-16 teams from nearby Nowa Nowa, Lakes Entrance, Bruthen and East Gippsland's big smoke, Bairnsdale. The three netball teams did likewise. Choosing guernsey colors proved simple - the red, black and yellow of the Aboriginal flag. Lakes Entrance RSL stepped in as sponsors and its secretary, Gil Sheppard, soon became one of the club's most ardent supporters.
The Lake Tyers Sea Eagles had an instant impact on the community by giving residents something to look forward to in a place where weeks - months - were often featureless. Vandalism declined as the kids concentrated on training and the season ahead. By the time of the first home match the changerooms had been spruced up, the ground mowed, and the colors of the Aboriginal flag freshly painted at the top of the goalposts. Residents were urged to clean up their yards, while volunteers walked the five kilometres from the highway picking up roadside litter.
From the start, Tyers games were a festive occasion. They were a good side and supporters came from as far as Eden and Warrnambool. Just as significantly, supporters of visiting teams got to spend an afternoon at Lake Tyers, shattering many a preconception. And every second Saturday the 30-seater community bus and the trust vehicles left in convoy for the Sea Eagles' day out.
In round seven the convoy arrived in Buchan and the wheels, while not quite falling off, began to wobble alarmingly. That much was assured when Buchan submitted a formal complaint claiming that the league's future was in jeopardy if the incident was not investigated. The league responded by bringing in John Atkins, owner of a Bairnsdale windscreen business, to sift through the day's events. The former East Gippsland Football League stalwart hadn't been involved in football for 10 years. By the end of an investigation in which no two people told the same story, he was prepared to wait another 10.
Atkins did manage to reach some conclusions. The first was that the whole episode was overstated, a view supported by Buchan's policeman. It was, asserted Atkins, all over in two minutes, with no serious injuries. The reason it died down so quickly was because most of those involved were trying to stop the fighting.
To his mind, the incident occurred for a variety of reasons, including lack of fencing, the "intrusion of a Buchan supporter on to the ground, closely followed by some Tyers supporters", and the actions of two Tyers players who had come off the ground injured. He recommended that no individual charges be laid because, in such a situation, picking out two players "seems unjust or simply searching for a scapegoat". Rather, both clubs were to blame and both needed to be counselled on race relations.
Less than impressed by his findings, the Omeo league instructed Atkins to charge the Tyers players, regardless of difficulties in confirming their identities. He did so, reluctantly, and was relieved when the charges were subsequently thrown out by a tribunal aware of the case's shortcomings. Ultimately, nobody's honor had been satisfied. The Tyers community felt persecuted. And the people of Buchan were left with the sense that their complaints had been swept under the carpet in the interests of political correctness.
If Tyers had earned a reprieve, it was a poor one. Whatever the investigation's judgment, the club now carried a stain. Whenever the Tyers people travelled in their bus and their leased Pajeros and Commodores, the other communities held their breath.
From that point on the complaints file on Tyers grew. It was said that Tyers players were intimidating the umpires; that the seniors played too rough, even for a league of hard men; that the juniors also went the knuckle, and not only on the field - while the seniors were playing, the Tyers kids were terrorising local children. Then there were the irritating administrative problems such as late team lists, any reference to which drew a defensive reaction from Edwards and Morris. Most irritating of all was the tendency to lose track of the interchange bench and field an extra player.
The first such instance occurred in the 1996 preliminary final against Swifts Creek. On that occasion, at least, Steve Richardson was prepared to believe it was an innocent mistake. After all, he had already approached them once during the season to admonish them for having an extra player on the bench, only to have the Tyers coach realise he had one too few on the ground.
While the seniors fell short of a first-up grand final, the juniors were there to fly the flag in Buchan on the big day. It should have been a celebration. Instead, the juniors were pinged for fielding an extra player and lost the game. Worse still, the simmering hostility towards Tyers burst into full view before the game was finished.
Lakes Entrance policeman Adrian Lalor saw it all unfold. A copper of the stern but fair school, Senior Sergeant Lalor had watched over Tyers for more than 20 years and had the community's respect for his even-handedness. It was a quality he needed more than ever that day after watching a Buchan player arrive with what he called "the world's biggest Esky". The player plonked his cargo down near the Tyers supporters and began drinking. With each beer he downed he found a fresh insult. And, as the junior grand final progressed, he took to running on to the ground at regular intervals to hurl invective. It might have made more sense if Buchan had been playing.
Lalor sidled up to the player and told him to quieten down before positioning himself between the Esky and the Tyers people. But when he left to escort the umpire from the ground the bile spilled over. By the time he got back the wide-eyed antagonist was surrounded by incensed Tyers supporters. Punches were thrown and Lalor soon found himself escorting the Buchan player and a Tyers supporter to the local station. It was a hell of a way to end the season.
The start to 1997 wasn't much better when Tyers fielded an extra player against Buchan, of all teams. Not that Tyers was entirely friendless just yet. Swifts Creek players didn't hesitate to join their hosts after an early season visit, drinking in the lightless changeroom as night fell.
This cosy picture became rare, though, as mums began to let club delegates know that they were unhappy about putting their kids in against the Tyers juniors. Such sentiment was seen as the reason behind Buchan's inability to field a junior team in 1997. And when junior teams drop off, league officials get twitchy.
Tyers did not help its cause when it met Swifts Creek in the second semi-final. The two clubs appeared destined to contest the flag and, in apparent desperation, Tyers went into the game with the full repertoire of dirty tricks. The game got out of control, it later admitted, but that was no consolation to opponents who left the ground with spittle on their face. It was, says Steve Richardson, the day they lost him.
Tyers lost the game as well, but won through to a re-match in the grand final. With the juniors there again, the Tyers community geared up for the biggest day in living memory as every man, woman and child made the trip up to Omeo.
If ever a day turned sour, this was it. The juniors lost again. The seniors followed suit, getting thumped by 15 goals. To add to their misery, police called for back-up after an on-field brawl spread to spectators.
Both sides now agree the police response was an over-reaction. At the time it merely reinforced the sense that the Tyers people - seniors, juniors and supporters - were out of control. Suddenly, in a league founded on togetherness, Tyers discovered it had all but run out of allies.
As the disaffection with Tyers grew, expulsion became a very real possibility. And yet the situation might still have been retrieved had Edwards and Morris read the mood correctly. They didn't. Precisely when they needed to reassure, to listen to criticisms and put their own case, they decided to register their feelings by staying away. From the annual general meeting. From a meeting of club presidents called by Jack Richardson, still their strongest advocate in his last year as league president. Instead of hearing Tyers' viewpoint, the presidents heard an umpires' representative outline how his brethren felt threatened when officiating Tyers games. The final spurned opportunity came when an exasperated Richardson called Edwards to ask if he and two club presidents could address a Tyers committee meeting. He was told to speak to lawyers. What he didn't know at the time - and what the Tyers people now contend - is that Edwards had taken it upon himself to handle the matter, without consulting the committee, in the belief that the whole process had racial overtones.
The league clubs circulated surveys to their members asking if Tyers should be expelled. The answer was an resounding "yes".
The Tyers delegates could no longer ignore the approaching storm. Informed of the next league meeting, they fronted up at Ensay's Little River Inn on a dry Monday evening in early February. The other clubs arrived armed with virtually identical motions calling for a vote on Tyers' future (no single club could be accused of having it in for Tyers that way). In the words of the motions, Tyers had "totally disregarded" the rules on number of players; had been guilty of irregularities with gate money; had not properly respected "administrative requirements"; and had not acted in the best interests of the league or the game. The motion also referred to umpires' concerns.
The vote did not take place that night after it was realised Tyers hadn't been given the required one week's notice of motion. So the motion was deferred for a week, allowing the Tyers' delegates time to report back to their committee. This was one development they couldn't mask.
When the committee members had recovered from their shock, Morris was asked to relinquish office immediately. Edwards survived. They would need all his persuasive powers now if they were to get out of this pickle. On 16 February new secretary Rob Andy - an Aboriginal liaison officer at Lakes Entrance primary school - joined Edwards for the meandering drive up to Ensay.
Buchan president Geoff Hodge took up the case for expulsion. Among his list of grievances, perhaps the most damaging was his claim that the two melees in Buchan had killed off one of the league's strongest features, "comradeship".
Edwards stood up to reply, arguing that the issues amounted to teething problems one might expect in a club lacking experience and manpower. Expulsion was an "over-reaction" in the circumstances. After offering a brief explanation of his recent non-appearances, he pleaded for the clubs to vote against the motion.
He was wasting his breath. The delegates had to follow the will of their members. The motion was passed unanimously. The crestfallen Edwards and Andy said their goodbyes. In their absence, the 1998 draw was tabled. And Buchan pledged to fence its ground.
The news descended on Lake Tyers like a thunderclap. It had lost its football club. Its netballers had gone down with the ship. And the community's reputation was at risk of doing the same.
There was one last avenue - an appeal to the regional body, the East Gippsland Football League, on the grounds that the penalty was too severe and that the club hadn't been formally notified of complaints. But it was the claim that there was an element of racial vilification that really set hearts racing. It was a jumpy committee of three who agreed to hear the appeal on 11 March. The night before the appeal both sides met separately to finalise their arguments. Tyers had overhauled its committee and before the night was out Edwards was asked to resign. New president Richard Saunders, a whippety "specialist bench player", would contribute little to the debate, but his presence provided an important signal that things were changing.
Standing before men he'd known half his life, Jack Richardson announced his immediate resignation. He was, he said, too old to be a hypocrite. Steve was among those who watched him leave.
The following night the car park at Bairnsdale's Wy Yung Football Club was unusually busy. Former Buchan president Kevin Kneebone, acting as advocate for the Omeo league, emerged out of one car. His adversary on this night, Rob Andy, stepped out of another with Saunders and Sheppard.
Andy was prepared to admit some faults, but wanted to emphasise that the club had been poorly served by previous administrators. The new hierarchy just needed a chance, he said. To illustrate this spirit of cooperation, he did not pursue the question of racial vilification.
The appeal ran for more than three hours. Andy and Kneebone were then called in to hear the decision. The appeal was rejected. Sheppard recalls the sense of "utter defeat" on the long drive home. Perhaps Andy and Saunders could feel the fragile strands connecting Lake Tyers to the outside world sundering.
Kevin Kneebone, watchful beneath bushy eyebrows, leans against a post and drags on a cigarette, the smoke curling into the warm Buchan air. The suspicious gaze may just be a legacy of his years as a guard at Pentridge's H Division. More likely, he's not wholly convinced a journalist would be talking to him if Tyers was a white club.
He is at pains to communicate that there was nothing sinister in all this. It was all to do with what he calls the "good order" of Australian rules football. That means on and off-field conduct at games. And that means being able to satisfy parents hereabouts that their kids should play for Buchan. Because it only takes one or two to take their sons to another league to bring the whole house of cards tumbling down. Is it pure coincidence, he asks, that Buchan can suddenly field a junior team again in 1998? "I could see that the league might have folded within two years if Tyers had stayed in," he says matter-of-factly.
The suggestion draws a snort from Jack Richardson. A long-beaked man with an gunshot laugh, he is sitting at the kitchen table of his property, Riverlea, one hour up the road. The subject is an uncomfortable one, even for someone accustomed to being a dissenting voice in the district. But he will say that it is drawing a long bow to blame Tyers for any difficulties in attracting juniors. The problem is an old and intractable one.
Speaking frankly now, it's his opinion that "Tyers never had much chance" given the conservative forces at work in the district. As for the stories of mayhem on and off the field, "it all gets blown out of proportion in the pub".
Says Richardson: "I attended more of their matches than anyone else (among the rival clubs), and I didn't see it."
He concedes that Tyers wasn't blameless. For starters, "the wrong blokes were running it". But it was too harsh to throw the club out. And now that the word has gone around that they're bad eggs, he doubts they'll get into any local league.
Steve Richardson has been standing near the doorway, fingering the rim of his hat as he listens to his father. The two haven't talked about the subject lately. It hasn't been easy for Steve. He still holds dear many of the principles ingrained by his father. But he saw players spat upon.
He saw the rattled umpires. He saw the disorganisation and was on the receiving end of outbursts from Tyers officials. And though startled at the depth of feeling among Swifts Creek members, he stands by the clubs' right to dictate the composition of the league.
On one thing father and son can agree. Tyers will not get back into the league in a hurry.
There are more than a few nods and winks towards racism in this story. Jim Flannagan is having none of it.
Flannagan has an outdoorsman's face - thick brow, ruddy cheeks and a burnished nose. The 64-year-old league president also has two artificial hips, which explains why he is ruminating on Tyers' situation in a Richmond hospital. Knitting his big-knuckled hands on his chest, he says it was a reasoned reaction to the inexcusable behavior of the Tyers juniors.
"There was no malice," says Flannagan. "We're here to guide people, not to persecute. This pushing kids over and spitting on them is not acceptable. These kids have to be disciplined and slowly brought into our society. If some department could just take them in hand. We can't neglect them. They're Australian citizens.
"They say we're denying them sport. But you've got to think of our children also being denied the opportunity to play. You've got to have harmony!"
Now retired from the police force, Lalor has a different notion of harmony, describing it as "a long-term project".
"You can't wave a wand and fix it today," he says. "Look, the great majority at Lake Tyers are trying very hard to assimilate.
A small percentage are alcoholics or miscreants, but no more than the general community. But because of the past and all the hype over reconciliation, people focus more on that. They select what they want to be critical of, instead of looking at the positive things." Lalor is convinced that nine out of 10 stories circulated about Tyers were "bar-room bullshit". Supporters' behavior was "exemplary" at home games, while colleagues elsewhere told him they behaved no differently to other clubs. "In the bush, all clubs have supporters who get on the juice and get vocal."
Gil Sheppard is one who knows how vocal the Tyers supporters could get. He travelled to most away games and believes locals misinterpreted their exuberance. The only time he felt embarrassed to be associated with the club was when a stranger, "a Black Panther type", started mouthing off at last year's grand final. It doesn't alter his view that Lakes Entrance RSL would continue to sponsor the club. If it ever plays again, that is.
Rules Road splits the forest on its way from the Princes Highway to the archway marking the Lake Tyers Aboriginal Trust boundary. Here the trees give way to undulating paddocks and, a few kilometres on, the first of the neat mudbrick houses. On a rise in the distance is white-steepled St John's Church of England, now replaced at the community's heart by the modern trust office across the road.
Inside the office a photo of the 1938 premiers adorns one wall, beside an honor roll from the 1914-1918 war. In an adjoining room there is a glass cabinet filled with photos and trophies of the 1996 and 1997 football teams. It is a stunted history.
Rob Andy is speaking softly through missing teeth and a cloud of smoke, his Don King shock of hair briefly tamed by a cap. Seated around him are subdued members of the new committee, one of whom, teasingly, helped win a few games for Buchan in his playing days.
Andy portrays Edwards and Morris as loose cannons who kept the previous committee in the dark. With their departure and the admission of past ills, he can't understand why the whole community is being made to suffer. Nor can he understand why issues already dealt with - either by investigating officers or police or tribunals - were recycled to argue for Tyers' expulsion.
"You're left with the feeling that there is more going on than meets the eye," he says. And yet he has been reluctant to turn it into a question of race, "because certain issues are too damaging". Everyone understands that if they want to have any chance of ever playing in the district again they can't light that particular powder keg.
Everyone also appreciates that the Tyers community now carries a stigma, having added its name to the small band of Victorian clubs expelled from leagues. The stigma may be evident already - after initial enthusiasm, one local league told the club it was too late in applying for the 1998 season. For the moment the club committee is staying together, looking to 1999.
They are doing it, says Andy, for the kids. With the club gone, the kids are back on the streets. Two players have already spent time in the Bairnsdale lock-up after getting into a blue on a night they would normally have been training.
Andy gives a wordless shrug. Some things explain themselves.
Field of dreams
Ian Cockerill
The Sunday Age, 4 April 1998
THERE are almost too many versions of what happened that day in the dreamy village of Buchan to recount. What is not in dispute is that the blood spilt was bad blood.
Tucked inconspicuously into the folds of the lower Victorian Alps, Buchan lies four hours east of Melbourne. To reach the scene of events, you turn right just past beckoning signs to the village's premier tourist attraction, Buchan Caves. Almost immediately you are alongside a low, crooked wood and wire fence marking the extent of the Buchan Recreation Reserve. A sign cautioning "No Livestock Allowed" is nailed beside the gate. At the far end, set against shorn hills, is a screeching, smoking sawmill - the source, it can be assumed, of the logs set around the boundaries of the football ground. This is the home of the Cavemen.
This is where the melee took place on 15 June 1996. In the time since it has taken on the qualities of a Rorschach test. Everyone saw something different. The local - collated - version begins in the first quarter with a player from the visiting Lake Tyers footy team punching a Buchan opponent "minutes" after the ball has gone, turning his cheekbone into a bad jigsaw. Tempers rise until the final quarter, when a Tyers player "almost decapitates" a Buchan player in front of the coach's box. A Buchan player comes to the defence of his stricken teammate. A nearby Tyers player joins in. A drunken female Tyers supporter, waving a stubbie, runs on to the ground to remonstrate with Buchan players before punching and spitting at a female Buchan supporter. A Tyers player, without provocation, sprints over to the Buchan coach on the boundary and barrels into him. When a Buchan player goes to his coach's aid, he is attacked by two Tyers players who had come off injured and changed into street clothes. He later requires seven stitches to his face. The teams and sections of the crowd get involved, up to 50 altogether. Later, as the Tyers people leave town, they hurl bottles out car windows and threaten to get square when Buchan visits their ground. One bloke who has been in an army brawl insists it was nothing compared to this.
The Tyers folk tell another story. The player with the smashed cheekbone? That happened when one of their players delivered a legitimate hip-and-shoulder and he slid head-first on wet ground into a log. As for the incident that sparked the melee, that was a fair tackle.
And things only really exploded when one of the Buchan fans leapt out of his car and kicked the Tyers runner in the groin. When one of the Tyers supporters got involved, all hell broke loose.
This might have been a regulation country football brawl but for the fact that Lake Tyers, with one or two exceptions, is an Aboriginal team.
Or rather, was. Just two years after being invited to join the Omeo District Football League, Tyers has been tossed out. A community has been shamed and, in this part of East Gippsland at least, reconciliation seems as far away as ever. With such a price, the question must be asked: Is there only one side to blame here?
Fifteen minutes up the Princes Highway from the tourist town of Lakes Entrance is the discreet turn-off to the Lake Tyers Aboriginal Trust. Tyers, as everyone calls it, began life as a church mission last century before being passed on to an iron-fisted welfare board. Barely 30 years ago residents were still being handed rations and marched to the showers. Such humiliations were leavened somewhat by the setting. The church, always good realtors, had chosen a spot where verdant hills roll into serene Lake Tyers. "A magic place," agrees league secretary Ian Forbes.
Magic it may be, but for most of its existence it has been a place of profound isolation for its inhabitants. A quarantined curiosity that reinforced the sense of separateness between black and white. Those barriers were briefly eroded when Tyers formed a football team in the 1930s and won two East Gippsland Football League premierships before the decade was out. But by 1950 the team had folded and Tyers once again retreated within itself. When the welfare board finally handed the community control of its own affairs the 200-odd residents chose to maintain a distance. They made their own mudbricks. They slaughtered their own cattle for meat. They only came to the notice of their neighbors on shopping visits to Lakes Entrance and when some made boisterous visits to the pub. It was convenient for those same neighbors to believe that whites weren't welcome on trust land.
The cost of boredom born of isolation was there for all to see, particularly among Tyers' youth. Petty crime, vandalism and amphetamine use escalated in the absence of meaningful activities. Without any visitors, the sporting oval was rarely used. The keenest footballers joined district clubs, but there was nothing the Tyers community could call their own. Until the Omeo District Football League came along.
This is a village league made up of eye-blink timber and farming towns scattered across the district's hills. Distances are reduced by shared beliefs that greenies are bad, the National Party is good and football is the glue that holds everything together. "A way of living," as one club president put it, that brings isolated communities together on winter weekends so that they can call on friends when the summer fires arrive.
They've been coming together in this spirit for more than 100 years. They hail from the high-country towns up the Great Alpine Road, a treacherous, winding strip of bitumen that discourages unnecessary travel. There's Benambra, Omeo, Swifts Creek and Ensay. Back down the long-gutted valley lies Bruthen, while Buchan sits out on a limb at the base of the Snowy Mountains National Park.
Money is tight, so the football and netball clubs combine draws. Player numbers are just as tight, and the seniors are forced to play 16-a-side. Still, the numbers don't always stack up. After one round in 1995 the Ensay club had to call it a day. The task of finding a replacement club fell to league president and Swifts Creek electrical contractor Jack Richardson. As a former player and coach at the Creek - where his son Steve is president and occasional player - Richardson knew the list of candidates was short. But he had always seen different possibilities to most of his neighbors. More than 30 years in this part of the country hadn't shaken the strange ideas he acquired growing up in Melbourne. Like voting Labor. And seeing Lake Tyers as a potential league club. It took just one phone call to establish that the people at Tyers had been waiting for this invitation for nearly 50 years.
Not everybody on the league's board shared the president's enthusiasm. Jim Flannagan, a respected cattleman and skilled horseman, had devoted nearly five decades to the Omeo club as a player, delegate and president. Now he used his influence on the board to argue that Tyers be put on a one-year probation. Although supported by the Buchan delegates, the others recoiled from appearing to judge Tyers before it played a game. The debate was resolved when it was pointed out that the clubs had the power to eject one of their number at any time.
There weren't many people at Tyers who could remember better news. But there was trepidation, too. Committees had to be formed, football and netball players recruited, uniforms selected, registrations processed . . . the list went on. Only a few people had any experience in such matters. Out of those Mick Edwards, a man with a winning personality and a long footballing pedigree, was elected club president. The untried Rohan Morris was elected as secretary and the club's second league delegate.
The football club gathered players for its senior and under-16 teams from nearby Nowa Nowa, Lakes Entrance, Bruthen and East Gippsland's big smoke, Bairnsdale. The three netball teams did likewise. Choosing guernsey colors proved simple - the red, black and yellow of the Aboriginal flag. Lakes Entrance RSL stepped in as sponsors and its secretary, Gil Sheppard, soon became one of the club's most ardent supporters.
The Lake Tyers Sea Eagles had an instant impact on the community by giving residents something to look forward to in a place where weeks - months - were often featureless. Vandalism declined as the kids concentrated on training and the season ahead. By the time of the first home match the changerooms had been spruced up, the ground mowed, and the colors of the Aboriginal flag freshly painted at the top of the goalposts. Residents were urged to clean up their yards, while volunteers walked the five kilometres from the highway picking up roadside litter.
From the start, Tyers games were a festive occasion. They were a good side and supporters came from as far as Eden and Warrnambool. Just as significantly, supporters of visiting teams got to spend an afternoon at Lake Tyers, shattering many a preconception. And every second Saturday the 30-seater community bus and the trust vehicles left in convoy for the Sea Eagles' day out.
In round seven the convoy arrived in Buchan and the wheels, while not quite falling off, began to wobble alarmingly. That much was assured when Buchan submitted a formal complaint claiming that the league's future was in jeopardy if the incident was not investigated. The league responded by bringing in John Atkins, owner of a Bairnsdale windscreen business, to sift through the day's events. The former East Gippsland Football League stalwart hadn't been involved in football for 10 years. By the end of an investigation in which no two people told the same story, he was prepared to wait another 10.
Atkins did manage to reach some conclusions. The first was that the whole episode was overstated, a view supported by Buchan's policeman. It was, asserted Atkins, all over in two minutes, with no serious injuries. The reason it died down so quickly was because most of those involved were trying to stop the fighting.
To his mind, the incident occurred for a variety of reasons, including lack of fencing, the "intrusion of a Buchan supporter on to the ground, closely followed by some Tyers supporters", and the actions of two Tyers players who had come off the ground injured. He recommended that no individual charges be laid because, in such a situation, picking out two players "seems unjust or simply searching for a scapegoat". Rather, both clubs were to blame and both needed to be counselled on race relations.
Less than impressed by his findings, the Omeo league instructed Atkins to charge the Tyers players, regardless of difficulties in confirming their identities. He did so, reluctantly, and was relieved when the charges were subsequently thrown out by a tribunal aware of the case's shortcomings. Ultimately, nobody's honor had been satisfied. The Tyers community felt persecuted. And the people of Buchan were left with the sense that their complaints had been swept under the carpet in the interests of political correctness.
If Tyers had earned a reprieve, it was a poor one. Whatever the investigation's judgment, the club now carried a stain. Whenever the Tyers people travelled in their bus and their leased Pajeros and Commodores, the other communities held their breath.
From that point on the complaints file on Tyers grew. It was said that Tyers players were intimidating the umpires; that the seniors played too rough, even for a league of hard men; that the juniors also went the knuckle, and not only on the field - while the seniors were playing, the Tyers kids were terrorising local children. Then there were the irritating administrative problems such as late team lists, any reference to which drew a defensive reaction from Edwards and Morris. Most irritating of all was the tendency to lose track of the interchange bench and field an extra player.
The first such instance occurred in the 1996 preliminary final against Swifts Creek. On that occasion, at least, Steve Richardson was prepared to believe it was an innocent mistake. After all, he had already approached them once during the season to admonish them for having an extra player on the bench, only to have the Tyers coach realise he had one too few on the ground.
While the seniors fell short of a first-up grand final, the juniors were there to fly the flag in Buchan on the big day. It should have been a celebration. Instead, the juniors were pinged for fielding an extra player and lost the game. Worse still, the simmering hostility towards Tyers burst into full view before the game was finished.
Lakes Entrance policeman Adrian Lalor saw it all unfold. A copper of the stern but fair school, Senior Sergeant Lalor had watched over Tyers for more than 20 years and had the community's respect for his even-handedness. It was a quality he needed more than ever that day after watching a Buchan player arrive with what he called "the world's biggest Esky". The player plonked his cargo down near the Tyers supporters and began drinking. With each beer he downed he found a fresh insult. And, as the junior grand final progressed, he took to running on to the ground at regular intervals to hurl invective. It might have made more sense if Buchan had been playing.
Lalor sidled up to the player and told him to quieten down before positioning himself between the Esky and the Tyers people. But when he left to escort the umpire from the ground the bile spilled over. By the time he got back the wide-eyed antagonist was surrounded by incensed Tyers supporters. Punches were thrown and Lalor soon found himself escorting the Buchan player and a Tyers supporter to the local station. It was a hell of a way to end the season.
The start to 1997 wasn't much better when Tyers fielded an extra player against Buchan, of all teams. Not that Tyers was entirely friendless just yet. Swifts Creek players didn't hesitate to join their hosts after an early season visit, drinking in the lightless changeroom as night fell.
This cosy picture became rare, though, as mums began to let club delegates know that they were unhappy about putting their kids in against the Tyers juniors. Such sentiment was seen as the reason behind Buchan's inability to field a junior team in 1997. And when junior teams drop off, league officials get twitchy.
Tyers did not help its cause when it met Swifts Creek in the second semi-final. The two clubs appeared destined to contest the flag and, in apparent desperation, Tyers went into the game with the full repertoire of dirty tricks. The game got out of control, it later admitted, but that was no consolation to opponents who left the ground with spittle on their face. It was, says Steve Richardson, the day they lost him.
Tyers lost the game as well, but won through to a re-match in the grand final. With the juniors there again, the Tyers community geared up for the biggest day in living memory as every man, woman and child made the trip up to Omeo.
If ever a day turned sour, this was it. The juniors lost again. The seniors followed suit, getting thumped by 15 goals. To add to their misery, police called for back-up after an on-field brawl spread to spectators.
Both sides now agree the police response was an over-reaction. At the time it merely reinforced the sense that the Tyers people - seniors, juniors and supporters - were out of control. Suddenly, in a league founded on togetherness, Tyers discovered it had all but run out of allies.
As the disaffection with Tyers grew, expulsion became a very real possibility. And yet the situation might still have been retrieved had Edwards and Morris read the mood correctly. They didn't. Precisely when they needed to reassure, to listen to criticisms and put their own case, they decided to register their feelings by staying away. From the annual general meeting. From a meeting of club presidents called by Jack Richardson, still their strongest advocate in his last year as league president. Instead of hearing Tyers' viewpoint, the presidents heard an umpires' representative outline how his brethren felt threatened when officiating Tyers games. The final spurned opportunity came when an exasperated Richardson called Edwards to ask if he and two club presidents could address a Tyers committee meeting. He was told to speak to lawyers. What he didn't know at the time - and what the Tyers people now contend - is that Edwards had taken it upon himself to handle the matter, without consulting the committee, in the belief that the whole process had racial overtones.
The league clubs circulated surveys to their members asking if Tyers should be expelled. The answer was an resounding "yes".
The Tyers delegates could no longer ignore the approaching storm. Informed of the next league meeting, they fronted up at Ensay's Little River Inn on a dry Monday evening in early February. The other clubs arrived armed with virtually identical motions calling for a vote on Tyers' future (no single club could be accused of having it in for Tyers that way). In the words of the motions, Tyers had "totally disregarded" the rules on number of players; had been guilty of irregularities with gate money; had not properly respected "administrative requirements"; and had not acted in the best interests of the league or the game. The motion also referred to umpires' concerns.
The vote did not take place that night after it was realised Tyers hadn't been given the required one week's notice of motion. So the motion was deferred for a week, allowing the Tyers' delegates time to report back to their committee. This was one development they couldn't mask.
When the committee members had recovered from their shock, Morris was asked to relinquish office immediately. Edwards survived. They would need all his persuasive powers now if they were to get out of this pickle. On 16 February new secretary Rob Andy - an Aboriginal liaison officer at Lakes Entrance primary school - joined Edwards for the meandering drive up to Ensay.
Buchan president Geoff Hodge took up the case for expulsion. Among his list of grievances, perhaps the most damaging was his claim that the two melees in Buchan had killed off one of the league's strongest features, "comradeship".
Edwards stood up to reply, arguing that the issues amounted to teething problems one might expect in a club lacking experience and manpower. Expulsion was an "over-reaction" in the circumstances. After offering a brief explanation of his recent non-appearances, he pleaded for the clubs to vote against the motion.
He was wasting his breath. The delegates had to follow the will of their members. The motion was passed unanimously. The crestfallen Edwards and Andy said their goodbyes. In their absence, the 1998 draw was tabled. And Buchan pledged to fence its ground.
The news descended on Lake Tyers like a thunderclap. It had lost its football club. Its netballers had gone down with the ship. And the community's reputation was at risk of doing the same.
There was one last avenue - an appeal to the regional body, the East Gippsland Football League, on the grounds that the penalty was too severe and that the club hadn't been formally notified of complaints. But it was the claim that there was an element of racial vilification that really set hearts racing. It was a jumpy committee of three who agreed to hear the appeal on 11 March. The night before the appeal both sides met separately to finalise their arguments. Tyers had overhauled its committee and before the night was out Edwards was asked to resign. New president Richard Saunders, a whippety "specialist bench player", would contribute little to the debate, but his presence provided an important signal that things were changing.
Standing before men he'd known half his life, Jack Richardson announced his immediate resignation. He was, he said, too old to be a hypocrite. Steve was among those who watched him leave.
The following night the car park at Bairnsdale's Wy Yung Football Club was unusually busy. Former Buchan president Kevin Kneebone, acting as advocate for the Omeo league, emerged out of one car. His adversary on this night, Rob Andy, stepped out of another with Saunders and Sheppard.
Andy was prepared to admit some faults, but wanted to emphasise that the club had been poorly served by previous administrators. The new hierarchy just needed a chance, he said. To illustrate this spirit of cooperation, he did not pursue the question of racial vilification.
The appeal ran for more than three hours. Andy and Kneebone were then called in to hear the decision. The appeal was rejected. Sheppard recalls the sense of "utter defeat" on the long drive home. Perhaps Andy and Saunders could feel the fragile strands connecting Lake Tyers to the outside world sundering.
Kevin Kneebone, watchful beneath bushy eyebrows, leans against a post and drags on a cigarette, the smoke curling into the warm Buchan air. The suspicious gaze may just be a legacy of his years as a guard at Pentridge's H Division. More likely, he's not wholly convinced a journalist would be talking to him if Tyers was a white club.
He is at pains to communicate that there was nothing sinister in all this. It was all to do with what he calls the "good order" of Australian rules football. That means on and off-field conduct at games. And that means being able to satisfy parents hereabouts that their kids should play for Buchan. Because it only takes one or two to take their sons to another league to bring the whole house of cards tumbling down. Is it pure coincidence, he asks, that Buchan can suddenly field a junior team again in 1998? "I could see that the league might have folded within two years if Tyers had stayed in," he says matter-of-factly.
The suggestion draws a snort from Jack Richardson. A long-beaked man with an gunshot laugh, he is sitting at the kitchen table of his property, Riverlea, one hour up the road. The subject is an uncomfortable one, even for someone accustomed to being a dissenting voice in the district. But he will say that it is drawing a long bow to blame Tyers for any difficulties in attracting juniors. The problem is an old and intractable one.
Speaking frankly now, it's his opinion that "Tyers never had much chance" given the conservative forces at work in the district. As for the stories of mayhem on and off the field, "it all gets blown out of proportion in the pub".
Says Richardson: "I attended more of their matches than anyone else (among the rival clubs), and I didn't see it."
He concedes that Tyers wasn't blameless. For starters, "the wrong blokes were running it". But it was too harsh to throw the club out. And now that the word has gone around that they're bad eggs, he doubts they'll get into any local league.
Steve Richardson has been standing near the doorway, fingering the rim of his hat as he listens to his father. The two haven't talked about the subject lately. It hasn't been easy for Steve. He still holds dear many of the principles ingrained by his father. But he saw players spat upon.
He saw the rattled umpires. He saw the disorganisation and was on the receiving end of outbursts from Tyers officials. And though startled at the depth of feeling among Swifts Creek members, he stands by the clubs' right to dictate the composition of the league.
On one thing father and son can agree. Tyers will not get back into the league in a hurry.
There are more than a few nods and winks towards racism in this story. Jim Flannagan is having none of it.
Flannagan has an outdoorsman's face - thick brow, ruddy cheeks and a burnished nose. The 64-year-old league president also has two artificial hips, which explains why he is ruminating on Tyers' situation in a Richmond hospital. Knitting his big-knuckled hands on his chest, he says it was a reasoned reaction to the inexcusable behavior of the Tyers juniors.
"There was no malice," says Flannagan. "We're here to guide people, not to persecute. This pushing kids over and spitting on them is not acceptable. These kids have to be disciplined and slowly brought into our society. If some department could just take them in hand. We can't neglect them. They're Australian citizens.
"They say we're denying them sport. But you've got to think of our children also being denied the opportunity to play. You've got to have harmony!"
Now retired from the police force, Lalor has a different notion of harmony, describing it as "a long-term project".
"You can't wave a wand and fix it today," he says. "Look, the great majority at Lake Tyers are trying very hard to assimilate.
A small percentage are alcoholics or miscreants, but no more than the general community. But because of the past and all the hype over reconciliation, people focus more on that. They select what they want to be critical of, instead of looking at the positive things." Lalor is convinced that nine out of 10 stories circulated about Tyers were "bar-room bullshit". Supporters' behavior was "exemplary" at home games, while colleagues elsewhere told him they behaved no differently to other clubs. "In the bush, all clubs have supporters who get on the juice and get vocal."
Gil Sheppard is one who knows how vocal the Tyers supporters could get. He travelled to most away games and believes locals misinterpreted their exuberance. The only time he felt embarrassed to be associated with the club was when a stranger, "a Black Panther type", started mouthing off at last year's grand final. It doesn't alter his view that Lakes Entrance RSL would continue to sponsor the club. If it ever plays again, that is.
Rules Road splits the forest on its way from the Princes Highway to the archway marking the Lake Tyers Aboriginal Trust boundary. Here the trees give way to undulating paddocks and, a few kilometres on, the first of the neat mudbrick houses. On a rise in the distance is white-steepled St John's Church of England, now replaced at the community's heart by the modern trust office across the road.
Inside the office a photo of the 1938 premiers adorns one wall, beside an honor roll from the 1914-1918 war. In an adjoining room there is a glass cabinet filled with photos and trophies of the 1996 and 1997 football teams. It is a stunted history.
Rob Andy is speaking softly through missing teeth and a cloud of smoke, his Don King shock of hair briefly tamed by a cap. Seated around him are subdued members of the new committee, one of whom, teasingly, helped win a few games for Buchan in his playing days.
Andy portrays Edwards and Morris as loose cannons who kept the previous committee in the dark. With their departure and the admission of past ills, he can't understand why the whole community is being made to suffer. Nor can he understand why issues already dealt with - either by investigating officers or police or tribunals - were recycled to argue for Tyers' expulsion.
"You're left with the feeling that there is more going on than meets the eye," he says. And yet he has been reluctant to turn it into a question of race, "because certain issues are too damaging". Everyone understands that if they want to have any chance of ever playing in the district again they can't light that particular powder keg.
Everyone also appreciates that the Tyers community now carries a stigma, having added its name to the small band of Victorian clubs expelled from leagues. The stigma may be evident already - after initial enthusiasm, one local league told the club it was too late in applying for the 1998 season. For the moment the club committee is staying together, looking to 1999.
They are doing it, says Andy, for the kids. With the club gone, the kids are back on the streets. Two players have already spent time in the Bairnsdale lock-up after getting into a blue on a night they would normally have been training.
Andy gives a wordless shrug. Some things explain themselves.
Truth always lies somewhere inbetween
Gawd that was a long article
Gawd that was a long article
Supermercado
The straw that stirs the drink
- Thread starter
- #423
Genuine sliding doors moment in 1944 with the VFA nearly becoming the VFL Second Division.
Rabbiting
Can't visualise this
maybe they should have done one of those stop motion photo things
anyway, 7 matches fo some Marx Brothers inspired tripping
trove.nla.gov.au
There you go
The connection with rabbits i'm still in the dark about
Can't visualise this
maybe they should have done one of those stop motion photo things
anyway, 7 matches fo some Marx Brothers inspired tripping
FOOTBALL. - Galliford Before the Commissioner. Rabbitting Charge Found Proved. - The Register (Adelaide, SA : 1901 - 1929) - 26 Jun 1926
After deliberating for nearly three hours on Friday evening, the League Commissioner (Mr. T. S. O'Halloran, K.C.) found proved ...
trove.nla.gov.au
There you go
The connection with rabbits i'm still in the dark about
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