Today marks 2 years since the old man passed away suddenly and posted at the time how he was me my 3 brother's greatest supporter in all our sporting endeavors.
While cleaning out his flat at the time we came across the game stats he used to take for all us for every game of football we played at Dennington Football Club down in Warrnambool, Jordan Lewis' junior club.
Sometimes he'd even take some senior player stats after our junior games where in 1 elimination final 1 bloke (Stephen "Worm" Williams) totaled 52 possessions and a goal in an elimination final win, the club's first final (and win) since the late 80's.
Anyway here are 8 of games from 1993 aged 14 for that season through to 1997, aged 18 for that season.
I used to be a pretty sore loser so with 26 touches and a goal all resulting in 2pt loss when wins were extremely rare, must have made me extra grumpy post-game.
This year I was 15 (my birthday is Sep 29th so I was always the youngest, just 2 days fro the cut off date) and would have weighed 40kgs but had to play under 18's anyway with 2 of my brothers that year. This was a preliminary final in the wet for memory and you can see all the extra add-on's from the old man who loved his game notes every now and then. My brother Jarrod, who had been invited to the Geelong Falcons this year I reckon, played pretty much his last game of footy ever in this one after dislocating his shoulder and we got flogged the next week in the Granny with an all in brawl to boot - good time!
2 out of 4 goals but a good old fashioned flogging as was the go back then.
Not sure how we won this as we wouldn't have been very good again that year and Districts were only a year or 2 away from moving to the much stronger Hampden league but we'll take it.
In 1997 I was 18 for the entire year, again with my 19th birthday not until after the season was completely finished and was a pretty successful year as we made finals that year, a rarity for the Dogs and 5 goals is my 2nd best return for entire game, after the 8 I managed about 20 years later!
Fortunately for us we were only the 2nd worst team most of the time in juniors so at least we had East Warrnambool twice a year to get some wins against with Chopper also having a day out.
We hated Russell's Creek more than anyone and we rarely beat them so do so in an elimination final was absolute gold although I always remembered kicking 5 in this game but the old man's stats don't lie!
This was the week after the highly fancied Old Collegians, who I eventually ended up playing for from 2000 - 2004 before moving to Melbourne. This was a simply terrible day in constant rain, wind and mud and I reckon they kicked a goal with about 10secs to go, it was a nail biter down to the end and we were shattered to lose to be honest as we'd battled all year to just get a team together let alone win a final and come this close to a 2nd one.
So there's a little trip down memory lane, love ya Dad.
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