Waiting for the millennium
Armadale’s Bob Sutherland speaks to Chris Egan
With origins that date back over 100 years, the Armadale Football Club has one of the longest standing histories in community football across Perth.
As Armadale legend and former Club President Bob Sutherland tells, it is a sense of pride to be involved with a club with such extensive history.
“We were founded in 1909, that’s a big thing that we have kept it going,” Sutherland said.
“Having that founding date on the wall at the bar, it is a great milestone.”
Having started out with their first game in the South Suburban Football Association in 1910, Armadale would record their first premiership in 1914 and would go on to claim league premierships ten times while competing in the South Suburban Football Association. The last of these league premierships would come in 1944, the first year back competing after World War 2.
Incredibly, this would be their last league premiership for the millennium.
Some sixteen years later in 1960, the South Suburban Murray Football League would form, as an amalgamation between the South Suburban Football Association and the Murray Football Association, before being rebranded as the Sunday Football League in 1984.
While competing in both the South Suburban Murray Football League and Sunday Football League, Armadale were a competitive outfit, but could never quite make the final jump to premiership success. They lost Grand Finals in 1961 and 1991, before famously running into a Kenwick juggernaut in the mid 1990’s dropping three straight Grand Finals in 1996, 1997 and 1998.
“Five grand finals in the nineties and getting beaten in every one of them,” Sutherland said.
“Being one of the most successful clubs in the Sunday Football League, playing 12 straight years of finals, it was tough.”
The change to a new millennium did not change the fortune for Armadale as they lost the first Sunday Football League Grand Final of the new millennium to arch rivals Kelmscott in and it would appear that Armadale would forever be the bridesmaid.
Yet after 57 years of waiting and heartache, things would finally turn for Armadale in the second year of the new millennium.
Playing in their second straight Grand Final, as underdogs against a red hot Thornlie outfit, this time Armadale would finally salute for their fans, winning a hard fought decider by nine points.
While premiership success has alluded them again since that fateful day in 2001, Armadale have continued to compete. Moving between the Sunday Football League, to the Peel Football League, before making it to the Perth Football League in the past 20 years, Armadale continues to strive hoping that, that first premiership of the millennium will not be the last.
