Mooroopna to celebrate Past Players and Officials Association 50 years on from sliding doors moment
Mooroopna’s Past Players and Officials Association has built scoreboards, coaching boxes and bars, held some of the club’s largest fundraisers and contributed significantly into the investment of the club — but it may have never got off the ground without a sneaky favour from a friend in the police.
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Past players associations bob up at clubs from time to time, from local country level to the higher leagues, but more often than not the band of players will go defunct, or at least not run with an official status like Mooroopna.
In fact, you’ll be hard pressed to find another PPOA that rivals the decades of commitment and consistency from the Cats’ very own former footballers.
On Saturday, Mooroopna’s PPOA will celebrate 50 years since its official inauguration in 1975 and a sliding doors moment in its founding year ultimately contributed to the long-term success of the group.
The idea stemmed between a small pack of former Cats in 1974, including the last two surviving inaugural members Graeme “Peewee” Young and Kevin “Sir” Holden.
“We approached the footy club and they said it was a good idea and that's where they left us initially,” Young, who was secretary for 42 years, said.
“But you'd get players injured and nobody would mow their lawns, nobody would go and see them in hospital, so we thought, ‘Well, we'll do that’.
“We don't pay any players or anything. We get gym equipment, paint the boundary lines, host barbecues, get footballs and netballs and that type of thing.”
“We also orginally started to support the juniors,” 15-year committee member Neville Musgrove said.
“That's what it was initiated for — funding junior support way back — and that's still what we do.”
However, back when the association began, tracking down former players to join the membership was tricky.
If the association was to get off the ground and start running smoothly, it needed backing and support from those who were still keen to support the club.
Fortunately, Young knew an inside man to get the ball rolling.
“With the addresses, we had a bloke who had admission to a computer system — he was a copper,” he said.
“We gave him all the names and, over a fortnight, he got names and addresses of all the ex players by looking up on the police computer, because they have all your registration for cars and things like that.”
With contact sources in hand, the founding members posted newsletters by mail inviting former players to join the PPOA membership and, from there, the numbers grew into a dedicated base of support for the Goulburn Valley League club.
The active committee could go on for hours about the contribution of former players.
The names of Mick Darveniza, “Doofa” Pinner, Chummy Baldwin, Jimmy Dobbyn, John Sellwood, and Fat Harbrow were just a few namedropped as those who reconnected through the past player gatherings and would dedicate time to helping the club.
But the PPOA soon began to attract members of the Mooroopna community outside the club’s four walls.
Despite some never playing in the navy blue and white hoops, listening to guest speakers at half-time became just as important to watch than the game itself, strengthening the football club’s connection to the community.
But arguably, the association’s greatest feats have come in the past decade.
Dedicated unpaid hours of labour has seen the association create upgraded facilities for Mooroopna Recreation Reserve.
In 2014, the association worked on building a new scoreboard, with the surrounding infrastructure of the screen proudly painted in navy blue and white hoops like the guernsey players wear each weekend.
The three-month construction was followed by an 18-month construction of a coach’s box finalised in 2018, also painted boldly in the colours of the club, allowing a unique viewing perspective to assess the run of play.
“That was a bit of an innovation for our coach here,” Musgrove said.
“It’s two containers, he wanted to go three high, but it was dangerous enough to build it to two.”
The latest innovation, completed in 2022, was an eight-month project to create a bar and stand for the past players.
With a heater and shelter, Mooroopna now has dozens of past players come for a chin wag and drink to watch Thursday night training, while this year’s anniversary game is set to bring “50 to 100” past footballers back to the club.
Musgrove said the connection between past and present players has only strengthened the Cats community and, while fighting off payments to play for rival clubs is harder to combat nowadays, the PPOA’s presence makes returns home to the Cattery welcome.
“The players get to know (the past players) and then they're keen to stay on in some capacity,” Musgrove said.
“But players get offered money and money's hard to get, so they'll go where the money is.
“Unfortunately, the allegiance to your club and that is sort of gone, which is why an association like ours has been important, to bring some guys back.”
Against Shepparton United this weekend, the association will be able to reflect on its significant achievements that have boosted the football club steeped in GVL history.
And perhaps without its sliding doors moment in 1975, Mooroopna’s PPOA would be another past players association lost to time, but yet it continues to flourish half a century on from its inception, marking it as one of the club’s strongest endeavours.
This Saturday’s One FM broadcast game is Shepparton versus Mansfield live from 1.30pm at Deakin Reserve.