Behind the Goals: the history of the Victorian Country Football League. By Paul Daffey

Description The Victorian Country Football League (VCFL) was integral to the running of country football in country Victoria and southern NSW for almost ninety years. It arbitrated on all the significant changes to the structure of competitions over the past thirty years in genuine attempts to redress imbalances, largely as the result of demographic changes largely as a result of the consolidation of the farming sector. “Investigations” was its keynote approach to seeking to solve the problems of lop-sided competitions. One of the most recent was the South Gippsland Review in 2009 which saw the reestablishment of the Gippsland Football League with Wonthaggi, Drouin, Bairnsdale back in with the old Latrobe Valley League clubs for the 2010 season. The move of the aptly named Wonthaggi Power (a merger in 2004 between the town’s two teams, the Blues and Rovers) out of the Alberton league after what author of the book on the VCFL, Paul Daffey, describes as “one of the great David and Goliath battles in Victorian country football” when the little village of Stony Creek narrowly beat the Power going for their fifth flag in a row in the grand final in 2009. Rodney Gillett, Country Footy Scores.