Something to Crow About
"I could write a book on the fun we used to have." Jack Hateley
A surprising history
Few know that the history of football in Robe stretches back more than 125 years. No-one is certain when the club was formed, however in August 1886 the Border Watch reported Robe playing Kingston at the latter's ground. After a hard struggle in terrible weather, the home side claimed victory, kicking three goals, nine behinds to Robe’s two goals, one behind.
Things became heated when the rivals faced off in September 1890 at Robe to decide the season’s premiership. A large crowd turned out in fine weather to witness the unsporting debacle that apparently followed, although the report by Robe’s correspondent may have been a tad biased:
From the start of the match it could be seen that the Kingston team intended to play roughly, but our men, being in good fettle, stood it all quietly, and at the end of the first quarter each side had secured one goal. Robe was then just getting warm, and the Kingston team, although big men, were about pumped out. The latter could not get the ball away from their own goal, and after it hung about there for some ten minutes A. Banks kicked another goal for Robe, the ball just going inside the posts. Several of the Kingston players called out ’No goal’, and rushed around Mr Chambers, the umpire, who was thus hindered from putting up the flag at once. He declared a goal for Robe, and as soon as he put up the flag the Kingston captain called his men off the field … Had the disturbance not occurred the match would, no doubt, have been one of the best games ever played here.
During the First World War there were no organised senior sports in Robe, but Harry Hudson started a football team for players under 18. Fresh out of boarding school in Adelaide, he took part in some tough away games, playing in two or three feet of water at Beachport. Sometimes the biggest challenge was running on to the field after the exertions of the trip, with players having to get up very early to get to Kingston and take turns running behind the buggy, which wasn’t big enough to take the whole team. ‘We used to hire a blacksmith named Dibden,’ Harry recalled. ‘He’d have a three-in-hand and he’d drive us to Kingston … And before we got to Kingston, about six miles on the Robe side, in the winter time all that area was covered in water. It’s very flat and it’s called the Peninsula … Dibden would whip up the horses and the chap running behind would have to run through the water to catch up.’
In 1929, Robe became part of a new Southern Ports Football Association, which brought together teams from the Kingston, Beachport and Robe areas, and at one stage included Lucindale. Unfortunately the team was badly defeated in the opening match of the new league, losing 12 goals to nil. Robe’s abilities turned around over the coming seasons, with the Roosters claiming the premiership in 1931 under the captaincy of Nora Creina fisherman Dick Cullen, a talented sportsman who also excelled at golf and bowling. The same year Robe fisherman Maurice Bermingham was named best player in the association.
Also in that year’s team was baker Jack Hateley, who decades later became president of the club and was made a life member in 1967. ‘I could write a book on the fun we used to have,’ he said, recalling the cavalcade of vehicles that would take to the district’s very poor roads to get everyone to games as far away as Mount Schanck, south of Mount Gambier. ‘We travelled in old T Fords and Rugbys and Dodges and Amilcars … and we always had a race home. The Ryan brothers had two old Fords and one was pepped up more than the other, and it was fun to see one just passing the other without any trouble.’
Howard ‘Cokie’ Sneath played football for Robe after the Second World War when the competition came out of recess, making trips on the back of a truck with a canvas canopy to provide protection. ‘We had a sing-song all the way home – all the old songs,’ he said. Arthur ‘Bones’ Fennell remembers the truck too. It belonged to his father Claude who played for Robe in the 1930s and owned a transport business. Arthur’s brother Norm was captain and coach, winning the Graham Medal as the association’s best and fairest player three times, including 1948.
In those days, the club’s home ground was Lea Park, also the showground and the school oval. There were few facilities to speak of at most grounds in the league. At Beachport, players changed behind the boobialla bushes until they built clubrooms out of pine off-cuts, topped with a tarred roof. At Kingston they changed in the show hall, which had a proper floor, but at Robe the floor in the old show hall was made of shell grit. At Reedy Creek, players had to chase kangaroos off the oval. ‘That was your warm up,’ recalls Ian ‘Candles’ Nunan, who lives just down the road at Greenways.
Ian was only 15, a 'skinny little kid' still going to high school, when he played his first seniors game for Robe in 1955. He has rarely missed a game since, as player, coach or spectator. He played in numerous premiership sides and captained an interleague team before retiring in the early 1970s, after serving as both vice captain and captain for Robe. He then coached at various levels for many years and in 1971 became patron, like his father Ken before him.
Some of Ian’s funniest memories revolve around the Southern Ports days. Back in the 1930s, a Robe full back was known to wear his overcoat on bad days. In Ian’s time one of the Hateleys kept a flagon of wine in the boobiallas behind the goal posts at Beachport. ‘And if the ball went down the other end, or during the centre bounce, he used to charge back there and have a swig,’ Ian says. One of the club’s trainers, Barney Sneath, relied on a similar remedy. ‘If somebody got knocked arse over tit he’d tear out and give them a swig, then he would have a swig himself.’
Fresh from playing senior football for Geelong Grammar, an 18-year-old Bill Quinlan-Watson was surprised to see the trainer turn up at three-quarter time with a bottle of whiskey instead of a tray of oranges. The attitude to practice was more relaxed than at his old school too, ‘but people had jobs to do and they didn’t have time. It was not as professional, but there was a lot of enthusiasm and effort,’ he says. ‘And football was a big thing for the town. It was a meeting place in the sense that practically everybody went to football that could.’
By the time Bill started playing in 1960, the club had moved to new grounds at the back of the town, where they remain today. He was still playing six years later when the team joined the Mid South East Football League, moving into a competition that included teams from as far as Port MacDonnell and Kalangadoo. ‘Effectively, the first thing we played was the lightning carnival on Anzac Day at Mount Burr,’ he recalls. ‘It was a knock-out carnival, all the teams were there, and I reckon they were 20-minute games.’ As a team new to the league from a small community, most people assumed Robe would not do too well, but as far as Bill remembers his team won.
Robe that year was led by shearer Bob Fuss as captain coach, and included Alan Mader who is remembered as one of Robe’s best players from this era. The talented rover excelled at reading the ball and went on to play a season with Woodville in Adelaide. In the Roosters' first year in the Mid South East competition, he shared the award for leading goal kicker and was named the club’s best and fairest, an award he claimed again in 1968 and 1969.
Two years after their debut, the Roosters won their first premiership in the league, defeating Glencoe in the 1968 grand final. These were halcyon days, with the township growing as the commercial fishing industry took off and the club steadily improving its facilities. Working hard to raise money for the improvements was the club’s ladies auxiliary, which also made the team jerseys under the eye of Von Jensen, an experienced tailor. As a fundraiser on match days the women cooked hotdogs over a fire in a large copper. By the 1960s the auxiliary had a proper canteen with a stove and had added afternoon tea to the menu, with the women baking at home to supply the food. ‘It was two shillings for a cup of tea and a cake plate, I can remember that,’ says Ian’s wife Billie, who was a member of the auxiliary.
She also remembers how basic the clubrooms were before the extended licensed premises opened in 1974. ‘Where the boys changed, that opened up, and that’s where we had all our functions in the 60s. It smelt like liniment and there were jock straps under the bench. We would quickly clean it out and shove a piano in there and away we’d go,’ Billie says.
Robe’s football club has been known as the Roosters as long as anyone can remember, but it could have been different. In the 1950s, the then captain, Peter Cullen, thought it might be a good idea to give the team a makeover. He was keen to change its name to the Swans. He even had four prototype jackets made up to help convince people, according to club patron Ian Nunan who still owns the one pictured (above).
Last Modified on 13/03/2014 17:09