Weekly Times | IT IS big news around town when any club lands a former AFL player for their local team.
One little Minyip-Murtoa supporter had a big thankyou to make when it was announced Clinton Young, a Hawthorn premiership player in 2008, would return to his junior club this season after his AFL career ended last year.
“At the little Catholic school in Murtoa they start the day with a morning prayer,” club president Andy Delahunty said.
“A seven-year-old ... his prayer just after (Young) committed to us was ‘I thank the Lord for Clinton Young’.
The prayers of the Minyip-Murtoa faithful appear to be working.
The Burras have won four games to start the Wimmera league season. Only Horsham, with 11 premierships since 2003, matches the feat.
Minyip-Murtoa enjoyed almost immediate success when the two clubs merged ahead of the 1995 season, winning three in a row in 1996-98, but it has not reached a decider since 1999.
Delahunty said the triple premiership was “a great thing to happen so early on” for the new club to create its own identity.
Names like Young and Delahunty are synonymous with Minyip-Murtoa.
Hugh Delahunty, the former Essendon player and Victorian MP, coached Murtoa’s only Wimmera league premiership in 1980.
A photo from that year shows eight Delahuntys playing at the club and Andy Delahunty said six went on to become club life members.
There are four Delahuntys from three families now in the seniors, including Andy’s son Kieran who won the league best-and-fairest in 2014.
Clinton Young is playing with his younger brother Blake for the first time. Another brother, Mitchell, is in the reserves, and Gavin Young is a junior coach.
Then there are stalwarts like Ken “Dasher” Milgate, who started playing with Minyip in the 1940s until 1961.
By the time it went from wooden spoon side in 1990 to triple premiers in 1991-93 Milgate was club president and a key part in getting ex-Collingwood player Ronnie Wearmouth to coach in 1991.
Milgate, 88, has three grandsons playing with Minyip-Murtoa and is still on the club’s board.
Until this year he was in charge of the grounds committee at Minyip (where the Burras will play three home games this season).
“It’s a great club ... If you didn’t like it and enjoy it you wouldn’t do it,” Milgate said.
“I enjoy it, the fellowship that goes with it, the good things and the bad things. You’ve got a bit of everything.”
The Burras made the 2012 finals after a 2008 wooden spoon, but last year’s preliminary final was the first time they got past the elimination final.
It was the first season coach Jaye Macumber was at the helm. Macumber played for and coached a Toronto side while living in Canada. He also coached the Canadian national side in 2011 and the North Ballarat Rebels’ Wimmera squad the past three years.
Minyip-Murtoa has had nine different goal-kickers in each if its four games and conceded the lowest score by far, but has yet to play Horsham, Stawell and Warrack Eagles.
“I think we have the tag of the team that is still working on playing the best we can,” Macumber said.
“We haven’t had many changes from last year but understanding the players physically and mentally has really helped the club and myself coaching them.”