Omnia   

Symthesdale  FCOver the summer, in a bid to start afresh after winning just one senior footy game in three years, the Illabrook Football-Netball Club underwent an off-field transformation.

The Bulldogs not only threw out their old royal blue guernseys and replaced them with a version of Port Adelaide's inaugural strip, they even adopted a different name.

Having shifted from its original ground in Illabrook to the growing town of Smythesdale in 1999, the club finally decided to fully embrace the move by becoming the Smythesdale FNC.

But as much as things have changed off the park, the club's on-field situation remains dire.

To put it simply, the Bulldogs have the weakest open-age teams in the Central Highlands league, by quite some distance.

In round one, their senior side was held scoreless by Springbank in a 271-point loss. Last weekend saw minor improvement when Smythesdale kicked 1.3 (9); its opponent, Skipton, piled on 34.35 (239).

The club's reserves have also found life tough, scoring 19 points but conceding 311 in their opening two matches.
"It's never easy to rebuild and start something again from scratch," Smythesdale president Nick Gray said. "We're not just a renamed or revamped Illabrook. We're a totally new club.

"And the CHFL isn't just an average league now. It's a very high standard of football. To compete and be successful, you've got to have experienced players to steer the younger ones. They're the guys who we're missing at the moment."

Formed in 1925, the Illabrook footy club won a stack of early flags before enduring a premiership drought that lasted more than four decades.

The club's fortunes turned around in the late 1980s, when it made five consecutive Western Plains league grand finals, winning the flag in 1988 and '91.

In 1999, with good players becoming harder to find, the Bulldogs' hierarchy decided they needed to move into the growth area to the south-west of Ballarat.

The Illabrook footy ground and netball courts were closed down and the Dogs, by now in a competition called the Lexton Plains league, made a new home at an impressive council-run facility in Smythesdale.

A push to keep the Illabrook name prevailed at that time, although it caused much confusion in the following 14 seasons.

"We've been playing in Smythesdale for more than 10 years, yet up until 2012 people were still going down to our old home ground, wondering where we were playing," Gray said.

Between 2000 and 2010, Illabrook struggled to match it with the likes of Skipton and Carngham-Linton, the clubs that won the last five Lexton Plains league flags.

The Bulldogs made their most recent appearance in the finals in 2008, when they beat Navarre in the elimination final but were knocked over by Skipton in the first semi-final.

In the next two years their senior side won only 11 of its 32 games.

With that in mind, the decision to wind up the Lexton Plains league, which was made during the 2010 season, could not have come at a worse time for Illabrook.

The Dogs' backers realised they had no option but to step up and join the higher-standard Central Highlands league. But they also knew their club did not have enough talent or cash to compete against their 17 rival clubs.

Those fears were soon realised. Illabrook upset old rival Skipton in its second game in the CHFL, but failed to win another game and finished on the bottom of the ladder.
With a fresh approach needed, Gray then stepped up to head a new committee.

"It's been a long, hard slog," Gray said. "When the second year of my presidency was starting, we had only $300 in the bank.

"But by the end of last season we had high $20,000s in the bank. That money has helped us change our colours and make sure we've got new jumpers for all grades."

Despite the financial progress, the past two seasons were very tough on the field. Illabrook's senior side didn't win a game in 2012 or last year, and its losing streak is now 51 matches.

Although the streak won't increase this weekend, as the Central Highlands league has a general bye over Easter, it is likely to become 52 when the Bulldogs take on Carngham-Linton next Saturday.

However, Gray is confident that things will turn around.
"In all honesty, we're not watching the scoreboard a lot at the moment," he said. "We're just trying to get the structure and the culture of the club right."

And the green shoots of an on-field revival are there.
"Dave Tuohy, the vice-president, and I coach the under-14s, and we won by 100 points last weekend," Gray said. "Our under-17s had a big win as well. It's just the senior side that needs to get stronger."

By Adam McNicol

Article first appeared The Age, April 18, 2014