Fleur de Lys flashback
Football fever

To celebrate Trinity's 150^th anniversary, we are going to dive into the time machine every month in 2022 and share stories and deliberations of our past students, as recorded in our annual student publication, the Fleur de Lys.

Ahead of the AFL grand final, we look back at the sports reports to see how the Trinity College football team was faring at three points in time.

1914

In 1914 the Trinity team knew they were in for a thrashing, but the dedication and commitment shown by the team became a form of winning in itself.

This year we met Ormond, who had previously beaten Queen’s. Once again we have to record a decisive win for our opponents and to congratulate them upon putting into the field a really first-class team. Ormond have every reason to ‘throw bouquets’ at themselves, as they played sterling football, showing strength in all departments of the game.

Perhaps if one simply looked at the scores of this match one might be apt to pass on with a sigh of disgust that Trinity had got no nearer to victory. As a matter of fact there is much to be learned from such a defeat. To begin with, our material for a team was, from the first, raw, nay, almost primitive, and yet, with almost certain knowledge of defeat, the men responded nobly to the call, and every evening for some weeks before the match, the Bulpadock shook to the trampling of many feet. Perhaps never before has a team tried harder to improve itself and so reduce by a goal or two the tally against them. It is a lesson for future generations – a stirring example of devotion to the College.

1931

In 1931, severe weather put a dampener on training sessions, but the sun came out ahead of the big day and thankfully evaporated the ‘lake’.

Trinity looked forward to this season as one in which its prospects of putting a good solid team in the field were better than for some years past. The loss of R. G. Macfarlan had left a hiatus that was difficult to fill. We obtained several promising freshmen, however, and it appeared as though Trinity should be able to produce a team that might attract some slight measure of sporting success to the College.

Although a full program of practice matches had been arranged against public schools, it proved, as usual, a difficult task to obtain anything approaching a representative team until second term, owing to athletics.

This is the main difficulty for those who are attempting to infuse some suggestion of system into the team, as it means that but three or four practice matches are placed at full strength.

As a result, we were not often successful in our practice matches. In the first round we were drawn against Ormond, while Newman played Queen’s.

The weather for several weeks previous to our match seemed to suggest the appearance of the teams in water polo outfits, in place of the usual garb, as being more suitable under the prevailing watery conditions, but we were fortunate enough to be favoured with several fine days before the match, the result being that the oval, under the care of the groundsman, had recovered sufficiently to enable it to be distinguished from the University lake to which it had shown a striking resemblance during the previous few weeks.

Conditions were very heavy, however, and though both teams played hard football, system was not an outstanding feature of the game.

[Spoiler, Trinity didn’t win.]

1979

In the days when fireplaces were able to be lit in student rooms, it was hard to pull some team members away from the warmth to attend chilly training sessions.

In many respects this was probably one of the best seasons in Trinity College football for several years. We had the first win since 1974 and the intake of freshers this year bodes well for future years.

Training early in the year was poorly attended and it was not until early in second term that we were able to inspire some of the senior gents to leave their Behan fireplaces to join us on the Bulpadock.

But we were finally able to have a number of solid training sessions before the first game of the season which saw us pitted against old rivals – Ormond – (who were still thinking about cricket).

Everybody was eagerly looking forward to attacking the Monners again after a defeat in men’s squash the night before.

…

Spectators are said to be ‘pleasantly surprised’ by the performance of the Trinity team, with some strong performances by team members.