As the club celebrates 100 years in the VFL/AFL, the Western Bulldogs’ pre-season practice matches kick off this Saturday with a sold-out game at Mission Whitten Oval, appropriately against Essendon.
Appropriate because it was a match against the Dons which help seal Footscray Football Club’s admission into the Victorian Football League in 1925.
In October 1924, the Bulldogs, having claimed the VFA (Victorian Football Association) premiership for a second successive year, were invited to take on the VFL premiers Essendon in a challenge match billed as the ‘Championship of Victoria’.
The match, organised by none other than Australian singing icon Dame Nellie Melba, was staged to raise funds for soldiers who had sustained terrible injuries in the First World War, which had ended just six years earlier.
In 1924, the VFL was seen by most as a stronger competition than the VFA, but many Association fans weren't so sure and here was a chance to prove their point.
Played at the MCG, the game attracted a crowd of 46,100, with more than £2,800 raised for Dame Melba's appeal.
The match was close in the first half, with the highly fancied Essendon holding a two-point edge over the Dogs at the long break. The Bulldogs kicked two goals to nil in the third term to take a 12-point lead into the final quarter, but most expected the Dons to finish strongly and claim victory.
In fact, the opposite scenario unfolded. The underdogs came out snarling in the fourth quarter and kicked four goals to one to cause a huge boilover, eventually running out 28-point winners, 9.10 (64) to 4.12 (36) to claim the title of ‘Champions of Victoria’.
Just how much this win meant to the people of Footscray cannot be understated. At an official function the following Thursday thousands packed into two local theatres, the Barkly and the Trocadero, to pay tribute to the triumphant team. Both were filled to their capacity of about 4000, and Melbourne's daily newspaper The Sun News Pictorial reported that more than 2000 fans were turned away.
When the Bulldogs captain-coach Con McCarthy led his team on to the stage of the Barkly Theatre, followed by trainers and officials of the club, “the cheering was deafening, and lasted for some minutes”.
The Sun was on hand to cover the event, and to recognise the significance of the victory by awarding a champions pennant to Footscray. The flag is enormous, measuring 3.9 metres long by 1.8 metres high. For many years it was displayed behind glass in the corridor leading to the old EJ Whitten Stand at Mission Whitten Oval.
When the stand was demolished to make way for a brand new one, the flag was moved and was found to be in an unfortunate state, due in part to an infestation which had seen insects feast on its threads.
A club-appointed conservator was appointed to assess, repair and restore the flag, and it now sits proudly on the wall opposite the new Bulldogs Museum, standing as a reminder of one of the Club's finest eras.
The Championship win was the culmination of a six-year period in which the Bulldogs played in every VFA Grand Final, winning four of them, in 1919-20 and 1923-24.
That period of dominance paved the way for Footscray's entry into the VFL in 1925, with the Championship win against their VFL premiership counterparts making their case for admission irrefutable.
In January 1925, the Victorian Football League officially welcomed the Bulldogs into its fold, along with North Melbourne and Hawthorn. Less than four months later, Con McCarthy led the Bulldogs onto the Brunswick Street Oval to face Fitzroy in the club’s first-ever League match for premiership points.
The League’s expansion took it from a nine-team to a 12-team competition. It remained that way for the next 62 years.
So as the Dogs host the Dons this Saturday, take a moment to remember the encounter between two teams wearing the same colours just over a century ago. It was that meeting which set the Western Bulldogs on the path to become the great AFL club it is today.
