Booleroo Melrose Wilmington
The Lions
Strength Pride Excellence
Established 1991
BMW was formed with the amalgamation of the Booleroo Centre and Wilmington-Melrose Clubs, both of these clubs having been members of the Northern Areas Football Association (NAFA) since 1979 and prior to that, the Flinders Football Association.
Previously in 1979 Wilmington United and Melrose had amalgamated to form the Wilmington-Melrose Football Club(1979-1990).
BMW is known as the Lions and wears their distinctive Red, Blue and Gold colours with the lion displayed prominently on the front of the guernsey.
To understand how the club ended up with their colours, it might help if we take a step back in time and look at the clubs that BMW is derived from and the colours that they wore before the new club evolved. Originally Booleroo wore scarlet and white, changing to blue, red and white from 1979 to 1990. Melrose initially wore red and black, changing to gold and black when they combined with Wilowie from 1962 to 1968. Wilmington first appeared in blue and gold changing to gold and black in 1968 when they became Wilmington United. Thus when the team became BMW if you use your imagination you can see the inclusion of at least one colour from each of the combining clubs, resulting in the red blue and gold strip. (1)
The BMW Lions play in the Northern Areas Football Association (NAFA) comprising of six clubs: BMW-Lions, Broughton-Mundoora-Eagles, Crystal Brook-Roosters, Jamestown-Peterborough-Magpies, Orroroo-Roos and Southern Flinders-Tigers.
The BMW Football Club like other NAFA Clubs field 6 teams each Saturday: A Grade, B Grade, Senior Colts (U17), Junior Colts (U14), Mini Colts and Sub Minis.
One of the best things about being involved in this football association is that families are supported by the fact that a netball competition administered by Northern Areas Netball Association (NANA) runs in parallel with the footy involving the same six clubs, playing at the same venue as the host club on any Saturday.
Since its inception BMW A Grade has achieved premiership success twice, firstly in 2001 and then 4 years later in 2005. Both these flags being achieved with memorable runaway wins. The first Premiership came defeating Jamestown Appila, BMW scoring 20.6 (126) to Jamestown Appila's 8.7 (55) a 71 point win to BMW. The second came when BMW defeated Crystal Brook by 84 points, BMW 21.19 (145) to Crystal Brook's 9.7 (61).
The B Grade team had immediate premiership success in its inaugural year of 1991 and 6 times since in 1995, 2001, 2005, 2007, 2008 and 2011, making it a total of seven premierships in 24 years.
Senior Colts and Junior Colts have also had their share of success over the years.
Seniors also picked up their first premiership in the inaugural year of BMW in 1991, another one the next year in 1992, followed by another one in 1996 making it three in the nineties and then 3 more in what has become known as the noughties, in 2003, 2004, 2006 and then three more in 2011 and most recently back to backs in 2014 and 2015 making it a total of nine.
Junior Colts have won a total of seven premierships, four in the nineties, 1992, 1994, 1996 and 1997, and three in the noughties, 2002, 2005 and 2006.
That makes it a total of 25 Premierships in our first 25 years. 2015 gave us a chance to celebrate 25 years of existence. 2017 we continue with Jake Keller and his bench coach Tim Arthur who have the huge job of rebuilding the A Grade side. Let's hear the roar of the Lion in 2017.
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Information above prepared from Club Records.
(1) Information about club colours from Peter Lines Book the Encylopedia of South Australian Country Football Clubs.
