Weekly Times | ROBERT Price has been playing senior football longer than some of his teammates have been alive.
Price, 44, and Meringur Football Club will kick off their season in the Millewa league against Cardross this weekend with Price’s 400th senior match.
The ruckman and full-forward played his first senior game in 1989 with Barmera-Monash in South Australia’s Riverland Football League.
This year he is the Kangaroos’ playing co-coach, alongside Peter Lindsay.
“The average age goes up a fair bit when you slot me in somewhere,” Price said.
“I don’t think there’s too many guys at the footy club who were even born (in 1989). A lot of them call me ‘Fossil’ or ‘Foss’.”
Price has played in seven football clubs across two states, but has been more successful across the border.
He won Riverland league premierships in 1992 and 2002 with Berri, and 2012 with Barmera-Monash, and the league and club best-and-fairest in 2002.
He also won club best-and-fairests with Irymple and Nhill, coached at Red Cliffs and played with Jeparit-Rainbow.
Price has never played a final in Victoria, but said the teams have never won the wooden spoon either.
Meringur will be technically starting from last position of the Millewa league’s remaining six clubs after Euston merged with Robinvale this year and stayed in the latter’s league, Sunraysia.
“We’ve got a long way to go to earn respect back against opposition teams,” he said.
Price planned to return to Barmera-Monash last season, after it had lost the Riverland grand final in 2013, when he was approached to do his pre-season with Meringur.
The father of four — Zoe, 15, Tori, 10, Will, 7, and Brooke, 3 — said one of the reasons he decided to join Meringur was so his wife, Jo, could return to netball.
The family is based in Irymple, but Price said Jo supported his decision to return to the Riverland competition in 2013 so he could play his 300th league game. But in that league netballers did not play at the same time or venues as their football counterparts.
Jo and Zoe played in the same netball team last year for Meringur, and came third and runner-up respectively in the vote count.
“You can’t play 400 games of footy and not have the support of your wife and your family,” Price said.
Millewa is the last Victorian country competition to start its season with Round 1 this Saturday — the Upper Murray competition also has Round 1 matches scheduled, but played one match last weekend.
With family, friends and former teammates coming from two states to be part of the weekend’s celebrations, Price said he would be careful this week to ensure he was right to run out on the ground on Saturday.
Retirement would come when he assessed at the end of a season that he could no longer contribute to a team, he said.
“I’m still proud I’ve been able to last for this long and still contribute in some form on the field, give the young blokes some sort of directions,” Price said.
