Bendigo Football Club

Last updated

Bendigo
Names
Full name Bendigo Football Club
Nickname(s)Diggers, Bombers, Gold
Club details
Founded 1998;20 years ago (1998)
Colours         Gold
Competition Victorian Football League
Ground(s) Queen Elizabeth Oval (capacity: 18,000)
  View Street, Bendigo, 3550
Uniforms
Kit body navystripes.png
Kit body sleeveless.png
Kit shorts.svg
Kit socks hoops navy.png
Kit socks long.svg
Home

The Bendigo Football Club was an Australian rules football club based in Bendigo, Victoria, Australia. The club played in the Victorian Football League (VFL) from 1998 until 2014, under the nicknames Diggers, Bombers and Gold at different times. The club disbanded at the conclusion of the 2014 VFL season. [1]

Australian rules football Contact sport invented in Melbourne

Australian rules football, officially known as Australian football, or simply called Aussie rules, football or footy, is a contact sport played between two teams of eighteen players on an oval-shaped field, often a modified cricket ground. Points are scored by kicking the oval-shaped ball between goal posts or between behind posts.

Victoria (Australia) State in Australia

Victoria is a state in south-eastern Australia. Victoria is Australia's smallest mainland state and its second-most populous state overall, thus making it the most densely populated state overall. Most of its population lives concentrated in the area surrounding Port Phillip Bay, which includes the metropolitan area of its state capital and largest city, Melbourne, Australia's second-largest city. Victoria is bordered by Bass Strait and Tasmania to the south, New South Wales to the north, the Tasman Sea to the east, and South Australia to the west.

Victorian Football League

The Victorian Football League (VFL) is the major state-level Australian rules football league in Victoria. The league evolved from the former Victorian Football Association (VFA), and has been known by its current name since 1996. For historical purposes, the present VFL is sometimes referred to as the VFA/VFL, to distinguish it from the present day Australian Football League, which was known until 1990 as the Victorian Football League and is sometimes referred to as the VFL/AFL.

Contents

History

The club entered the VFL in 1998 as the Bendigo Diggers. It struggled for on-field success, winning only seven games in its first three seasons, and enduring successive winless seasons in 2001 and 2002. [2]

Starting from 2003 the club formed an affiliation with the Essendon Football Club in the Australian Football League, under which Essendon could field its reserves players in the Bendigo team. The Diggers mascot was changed to the Bendigo Bombers and the guernsey changed to black with a red sash, to match those of the Essendon AFL club. Over the following ten years of the clubs' affiliation, the club played finals five times, with its best finish and sole finals victory coming in 2005, when the club finished fourth. The club also endured another winless season during the affiliation, in 2009. [2]

The Australian Football League stages the highest-level senior Australian rules football competition in the country. However, since the late 1980s, when the former Victorian Football League expanded interstate to become the modern Australian Football League, there has not been a league-wide reserves competition; and, since 2000, there has been no dedicated reserves competition of any kind. As a result, AFL-listed players who are not selected in their senior teams are made eligible to play in one of the second-tier state leagues: the Victorian Football League, South Australian National Football League, West Australian Football League, or North East Australian Football League. The system used to accommodate AFL-listed players within these leagues varies considerably from state to state.

Essendon Football Club Australian rules football club

The Essendon Football Club, nicknamed the Bombers, is a professional Australian rules football club that plays in the Australian Football League (AFL), the sport's premier competition. Thought to have formed in 1872, the club played its first recorded game on 7 June 1873 against a Carlton Second 20, winning 1 goal to nil. The club played a senior club in the Victorian Football Association in 1878, one year after the VFA formed. It is historically associated with Essendon, a suburb in the north-west of Melbourne, Victoria. Since 2013, the club has been headquartered at The Hangar, Melbourne Airport, and plays its home games at either Docklands Stadium or the Melbourne Cricket Ground; throughout most of its history the club's home ground and headquarters was Windy Hill, Essendon, where it played from 1922 until 1991. While it stopped playing games at the ground thereafter, Windy Hill remained its training and administration base until the end of 2013. Dyson Heppell is the current team captain.

The 2005 Victorian Football League season was the 124th season of the Australian rules football competition. The premiership was won by the Sandringham Football Club, after it defeated Werribee in the Grand Final on 18 September by nine points; it was Sandringham's ninth top-division premiership, and the second of three premierships won consecutively by the club between 2004 and 2006.

After the completion of the 2011 season, Essendon announced that the 2012 season would be the last season of affiliation with Bendigo; Essendon fielded a stand-alone reserves team in the VFL from 2013, and Bendigo returned to fielding a stand-alone senior team. To reflect the impending change, the team changed its name to the Bendigo Gold, starting in 2012 (the final season of the clubs' affiliation). [3]

Without access to the professional players or financial support offered by its affiliation with Essendon, Bendigo quickly struggled to remain competitive as a stand-alone club. Bendigo was winless in both 2013 and 2014 – which, when added to the 2001 and 2002 seasons, represented four consecutive winless seasons as a stand-alone club. In June 2014, the club concluded that it was not financially viable in the long term; it consequently disbanded and left the VFL following the 2014 season. [1]

Honour board

Year Finishing position Coach Captain Best and Fairest Leading Goalkicker
1998 10th
1999 11th (Wooden Spoon)
2000 18th (Wooden Spoon)
2001 16th (Wooden Spoon)
2002 16th (Wooden Spoon)
2003 10th
2004 8th
2005 4th
2006 12th
2007 8th
2008 10th
2009 13th (Wooden Spoon)
2010 8th
2011 7th
2012 8th
2013 14th (Wooden Spoon) Austinn Jones Steven Stroobants Alik Magin Alik Magin (17)
2014 16th (Wooden Spoon) Austinn Jones Steven Stroobants Daniel Toman [4] Tyrone Downie (31)

Related Research Articles

Frankston Football Club

Frankston Football Club, nicknamed The Dolphins, is an Australian rules football club based in Frankston, Victoria. The club was formed in 1887. It played in the Victorian Football Association/League from 1966 until 2016, and will return to that competition from 2018.

Brent Prismall Australian rules footballer

Brent Prismall is a former Australian rules football player for the Geelong Football Club and Essendon Football Club in the Australian Football League (AFL).

The 2006 Victorian Football League (VFL) is a semi-professional Australian Rules Football competition featuring 12 teams from Victoria and one team from Tasmania.

Samuel (Sam) Hunt is an Australian Rules Footballer who has played for Essendon in the Australian Football League (AFL), Geelong and Bendigo in the Victorian Football League (VFL), the Geelong Falcons in the TAC Cup and South Fremantle in the West Australian Football League (WAFL).

The 2008 Victorian Football League (VFL) was a semi-professional Australian Rules Football competition featuring thirteen teams from Victoria and one team from Tasmania.

Essendon (Association) Football Club was an Australian rules football club which played in the Victorian Football Association (VFA) from 1900 until 1921. The Dreadnoughts wore black and red, and played their home games at the Essendon Recreation Reserve. They were also known by the name "Essendon Town" (1900–1904), in order to distinguish them from the Essendon Football Club that played in the Victorian Football League (VFL).

The 2009 Victorian Football League (VFL) season was the 128th season of the Australian Rules Football competition. The premiership was won by the North Ballarat Football Club, which defeated the Northern Bullants by 23 points in the Grand Final on 25 September. It was North Ballarat's second consecutive premiership, and the second in the club's history.

The 129th season of the Victorian Football League was held in 2010. The North Ballarat Football Club won the premiership, its third flag in a row.

Nick Carter is a former Australian rules football player. During his career Carter played for Fitzroy, Brisbane and Melbourne in the Australian Football League (AFL).

Ken Hall is a former Australian rules football player from Tasmania. He played junior football in his home state and spent two years in the seniors at North Hobart. Hall then moved to Victoria in 2001 to play for Essendon Football Club's reserves side in the Victorian Football League (VFL).

Ben Duscher Australian rules footballer

Ben Duscher is an Australian rules footballer; he was co-captain for the Bendigo Bombers in the Victorian Football League (VFL) in 2011; co-captain of Bendigo Gold VFL team in 2012 and was elected by his peers as co-captain of the Essendon VFL Football Club in 2013. At the commencement of the 2012 season he was rated number four amongst the players in the Victorian Football League (VFL). Mid 2013 season Ben was rated number 3 amongst the top 50 VFL players by Football Nation. Ben won the Carter medal for club champion at the Bendigo Bombers in 2011 and was runner-up in 2012. He won the Essendon VFL Best and Fairest in 2013.

The 131st season of the Victorian Football League/Victorian Football Association was held in 2012. Geelong won the 2012 VFL Premiership, defeating Port Melbourne in the Grand Final.

The 2013 Victorian Football League season was the 132nd season of the Victorian Football Association/Victorian Football League Australian rules football competition. The premiership was won by Box Hill Hawks who defeated Geelong by 21 points in the Grand Final.

The 2014 Victorian Football League season is the 133rd season of the Victorian Football Association/Victorian Football League Australian rules football competition. The premiership was won by the Footscray Bulldogs, the reserves team of the Australian Football League's Western Bulldogs which was competing in its first season in the VFL, after it defeated Box Hill by 22 points in the Grand Final on 21 September; it was the first senior VFL premiership won by the Footscray reserves team, and it was the tenth senior VFA/VFL premiership won by the Footscray/Western Bulldogs Football Club overall.

The 2000 Victorian Football League season was the 119th season of the Australian rules football competition. The premiership was won by the Sandringham Football Club, after defeating North Ballarat by 31 points in the Grand Final on 27 August.

The 2015 Victorian Football League season was the 134th season of the Victorian Football Association/Victorian Football League Australian rules football competition.

The 2003 Victorian Football League season was the 122nd season of the Australian rules football competition.

References

  1. 1 2 Brent Diamond (25 June 2014). "VFL club Bendigo Gold to fold". The Age. Retrieved 26 June 2014.
  2. 1 2 Luke West (14 September 2012). "So long Dons". Bendigo Advertiser. Bendigo, VIC. Retrieved 21 April 2014.
  3. ↑ Landsberger, Sam (27 March 2012). "Bendigo Gold unveiled for final year with Bombers before Dons go solo in VFL". Herald Sun. Retrieved 27 March 2012.
  4. ↑ Toman wins 2014 Gold best and fairest


This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.