The Cats, like the farmers, are back in business. Three years ago the plight of the Finley Football Club mirrored that of the local farmers, struggling to cope with the decade-long drought that gripped much of eastern Australia.
The Cats' senior team ended the 2008 and '09 seasons winless and on the bottom of the Murray league ladder. At the same time, the farmers, many of whom usually grow irrigated crops, had their water allocations reduced to nothing.
How times have changed. Not only has the drought broken, meaning the farmland around Finley is once again lush with rice, wheat and canola, but the footy club has rediscovered its verve as well.
Today, the Cats will celebrate the dramatic turnaround when their senior side takes on Rumbalara in the Murray league's second elimination at Tocumwal.
''It'll mean a lot for this little community,'' says club president and local butcher Ashley Haynes.
A rural town, whose claim to fame is being home to the largest irrigation channel in Australia, Finley is in southern New South Wales, 22 kilometres from the Murray River and 290 kilometres north of Melbourne.
The local football club, which counts Allan Jeans, Shane Crawford and Tom Hawkins among its alumni, has been in operation for more than 100 years, although it didn't join the Murray league until 1933.
Finley's first period of success in the MFL came in the 1950s when it won three senior premierships in seven years. But it is the extraordinary run of success in the early 1980s that remains the club's most glorious era.
Powered by a band of talented locals, the Cats won the 1981 and '82 premierships, notching a 35-game winning streak in the process.
Even the game in which Finley was finally beaten, by Numurkah, became the stuff of legend. On that day, the Cats' captain pointed the wrong way after the toss and his men lined up for the opening bounce in the wrong positions.
By the time the situation was rectified, Numurkah had taken control of the game.
Finley's depth of talent was shown by its reserves side at the time, which won six flags in seven seasons between 1980 and '86. (Its thirds also won flags in 1980 and 1982.)
The Cats won another senior premiership in 1988 and their seconds won a couple more in 1990 and '91, but they have not won another open-age flag in the two decades since. ''In the '80s it didn't matter what happened, we always seemed to have plenty of players,'' Haynes says. ''We were a government town. We had a big MIL [Murray Irrigation Limited] office and a motor registry office. Those government agencies had big gangs of people. Back then it was hard to get a park at training. It's hard to imagine now.''
Finley's senior team made the finals in 2007 but a year later, as the drought dragged on, it suffered an exodus of players and tumbled down the ladder. The closest the Cats came to winning a game in 2008 was an 18-point loss to Echuca United in round 10. Massive losses were the norm on most other weekends.
In the three-week stretch from round seven to round nine, Finley conceded 86 goals and kicked only three. In the last of those matches, against Barooga, the final score was 31.18 (204) to 0.2 (2).
The 2009 campaign was just as grim as the Cats' seniors again failed to post a victory. Still, there were a few positives. The senior team managed to kick a goal in all its matches; the club's thirds won the flag; and the town celebrated as another of its favourite sons made it all the way to the AFL grand final.
''Country sides don't have many young blokes who make it to the big league, but we had Crawford play in the Hawthorn premiership in 2008 and Tom Hawkins in 2009,'' Haynes says proudly. ''For a population of around only 2000 people, we think that's a pretty good effort.''
In Finley, however, the local club was at the crossroads. Several people, including many of the players, argued that it should withdraw from the Murray league and join the lower-standard Picola league. Yet plenty of others believed the club had enough money and young talent to climb back up the ladder.
''With the backing of our major sponsor, Tim Rourke, we decided to stay in the Murray league and do what it took to get stronger,'' says Haynes, who began his stint as president at the end of the '09 season. ''The club has always invested heavily in its juniors and we'd won another thirds' flag in 2006, so we set a target of getting those kids back to the club. Most of them had left town to gain employment or go to university.''
Finley's recruiting mission became easier when local legend Damian Sexton assumed the coaching role. A number of former players soon committed to driving back to the town each weekend, some from as far as Melbourne.
The injection of talent paid an immediate dividend when the Cats beat Deniliquin and broke their losing streak, in round one last year. It was a landmark win as Finley had lost its previous four games against the Rams by a combined margin of 538 points.
''It was just phenomenal,'' Haynes recalls. ''They nearly lifted the roof off the club rooms when they sang the song. It was really something.''
Last season, Finley won 10 games and almost made the finals.
Sexton stepped down as coach at the end of 2010, handing the reins to another former player, Robert Daniel, but the Cats have continued their improvement this year. They have relied mostly on home-grown players like Daniel's teenaged son Jordan. The four Robertson brothers - Nick, Will, Tim and Cameron, whose father Mark was a regular in the seniors during the glory days in the 1980s - have also played a key role. To top things off, the Melbourne-based boys have brought along a couple of their mates. One of them, Tom Seccull, has booted 47 goals and regularly been among the Cats' best players.
Today, hundreds of Finley supporters will travel down the Newell Highway to celebrate their club's revival (the A-Grade netball team, coached by Sexton's wife Dian, will be in action as well).
Although the Cats' senior team has beaten Rumbalara twice already this season, the players and coaches are taking nothing for granted. They know that the Tocumwal ground, the largest in the league, is expected to favour Rumbalara's fast and skilful indigenous players.
Win or lose, Haynes will be proud simply to have seen his club again competing at the business end of the season.
By Adam McNicol
Article first appeared The Sunday Age, August 28 2011
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