Omnia   

murchisonWhen renowned bush footy coach Steve Daniel was living in Toolamba some years ago, he couldn't believe the small but growing town, which is 20 kilometres south of Shepparton, did not have its own football club.

"At that stage Toolamba was probably the only town in the Goulburn Valley without a club or a trace of a club," recalled current Toolamba resident Craig Thompson.
Daniel and a number of locals, including Ken Londrigan and Warwick Gregory, often found themselves pondering the situation in the local pub.

As a bit of fun, they decided to get some polo shirts made that spruiked a mythical Toolamba footy club.

The club was known as "The Hooters" and featured an owl as its mascot.

"They made five or six shirts," Thompson said. "Then heaps of others said, 'Get me one,' and all of a sudden there were all these people getting around in Toolamba shirts. They looked quite professional; they had sponsors and all that sort of gear on them.

"I think there ended up being at least 70 or 80 of the shirts going around."

The popularity of the shirts triggered further discussions in the community. "If so many people were prepared to wear T-shirts for a club that didn't exist, maybe the town needed a club for real," Thompson said.
Londrigan and Gregory were among the people who subsequently looked into their town's footballing history.

It turned out that Toolamba, which has a population of about 900, had its own footy club for the first half of the 20th century.

But the club, which played in various district leagues, fell on hard times and ended up merging with nearby Murchison.

The merged entity was initially known as Murchison-Toolamba, and evidence of this, in the form of a team photo, still hangs in the Junction Hotel in Toolamba.
However, the Toolamba name was dropped when the club joined the Kyabram District league in 1964.
For the next five decades the club was simply known as the Murchison Grasshoppers.

"I suppose it's not a great surprise that they made the change," Thompson said. "Toolamba was fading away back then."

It became clear to the Toolamba locals that changing the name of the Murchison footy club was their best option for recognition.

So they put forward a proposal for the club to be renamed the Murchison- Toolamba Football-Netball Club.
To their delight, the Grasshoppers' members overwhelmingly voted in favour of the name change at a special general meeting on April 14.

Thompson, who has taken on the role as club president for this season, played a role behind the scenes in ensuring the change proceeded smoothly.

"It certainly wasn't my idea, but I was very much in favour of it," he said.

Bringing back the Toolamba name is expected to boost the club's prospects.

Toolamba may once have been a fading town, but it is now one of the fastest-growing places in the Goulburn Valley, thanks largely to its proximity to Shepparton.
"When you look at the footy landscape at the moment, anything we can do to bring in more people can only be a good thing," Thompson said.

"Toolamba's primary school will have 150 kids next year, while Murchison will have 110. And the little school in between them, Dhurringile, will have 15 kids.

"That gives us a pretty big catchment for future players." Thompson also hopes that officially embracing Toolamba and its growing community will enable the club to raise the funds needed to improve the facilities at its home ground in Murchison.

"Our rooms are terrible," he said. "We really hope to get funding for a new social room soon."

The name change and move to embrace Toolamba has come on the back of a strong period in the Grasshoppers' on-field history.

In 2013, they broke a 31-year senior footy premiership drought with a 31-point grand final win over Stanhope.
And they made it to the preliminary final in 2014, only to be knocked over by eventual premier Nagambie.

The senior side missed the finals last season but, despite an inconsistent start, Thompson is confident it can make an impact this September.

"We think we've got a team that could go pretty well in the finals," he said. "But a lot of other clubs are thinking the same."

Whatever happens this season, Murchison-Toolamba's future looks bright.

And some credit for that must be directed towards the people who devoted so much time to putting Toolamba back on the footy map.

"Toolamba is going to be a very powerful part of our club into the future," Thompson said.

"I'm not saying we're going to be playing some of our home games in Toolamba in the near future, but who knows what will happen in 20 to 30 years' time."

MURCHISON-TOOLAMBA FNC

Murchison-Toolamba has won four senior footy premierships in the Kyabram District league (1964, 1966, 1982 and 2013)

The Kyabram District league has 13 clubs and uses a final-six system to decide its premier

by Adam McNicol

Read Full Article