Inches deep in water and slime

Among the things that arrived at Ormond in 1881 were its first students and football of the AFL persuasion. Ormond began playing football against Trinity that year and has yet to stop doing so.

During this nearly 140 years, Ormond football teams have surmounted a range of obstacles including the very ground they played on. One of the venues for games in Ormond’s early years, the Melbourne Football Ground (near the MCG), was nicknamed the ‘gravel pit’ and was notoriously unpleasant.

University facilities were not always an improvement: in 1931 Ormond lost the grand final on “the University Oval, [which] in spite of much excellent work by the curator, was in places inches deep in water and slime” as one newspaper reported. One wonders what happened when the curator’s work was less than ‘excellent’.

In Ormond’s early decades there was only one other College to play football against: now-traditional rivals Trinity. Naturally, Ormond was often intercollegiate champion.

The intercollegiate competition broadened when Queen’s College opened in 1887 but Ormond nonetheless won the premiership for fourteen successive years in the early 20th century. This ended in 1921, when they were knocked out in the first round.

A significant influence on the competition was Newman College which opened in 1918 and made intercollegiate football a whole new ball game. (See also: rugby). By 1937, it was Newman’s turn to celebrate a 14th successive premiership, despite having kicked twice as many behinds as goals in the year’s grand final.

Another important part of Ormond AFL is women’s football which began at the College by 1985. While in the early years Ormond struggled to find a full team, this has been more enthusiastically taken up in recent years and has the advantage of rarely needing to play in slime or mud. In 2014, the women’s team did not concede a single point.

Ormond has had a second men’s football team since at least 1933. In the 1990s the team became known as the Magoos, which is possibly rhyming slang for the ‘twos’. At that time the team was more of a social than sporting force.

With a women’s team and two men’s teams fielded every year, the strong tradition of football at Ormond continues.