OLD COLLEGIANS FOOTBALL NETBALL CLUB INC
A short History writen by Peter Healey in 2006
Old Collegians Football Club had its beginnings from an Under 21 competition side known as YCW.
In March 1951 Y.C.W. were admitted to the Warrnambool & District Football League becoming the sixth side in a competition that grew to 12 sides.
The information collated has mainly been found in the Warrnambool Standard Newspaper. In the 50’s – 60’s not much information was to be found about the WDFL. The teams listed are as they appeared in the paper, and are not necessarily how they lined up. In the years that OCFC were not in the finals, teams were picked at random during the season.
At the end of the 1952 season it was decided to change the name from YCW to Old Collegians Football Club thus maintaining the close tie that existed between YCW and the Christian Brothers College. In the early days the main requisite to play with OCFC was the player had to be catholic. The first player not to be a catholic was Mick Patten in 1953, and was further reinforced when Alf Seare joined the Club and went on to play 168 games and became a Life Member.
Collegians have had a varied history over the years from the heady days of the 60’s to the dark days of the 70’s when it appeared that the Club would disband in 1977. A group of people set about the task of lifting Collegians from oblivion, winning a Premiership after a 14 year drought the Seniors never missed the final for a further 12 years but over the past 4 years have failed to make the Senior finals. There are still people working hard to lift Collegians into the winning circle on the football field.
In 1991 Collegians entered the Netball competition and this has proved very successful for the Club having won 10 Premierships in total from all grades since then. I wish to thank anyone who has supplied information and given of his or her time to help to provide a record of the history of the Club in some small way. If there are mistakes please forgive me, as the computer hates me.
Peter Healey