Full circle

Mosman Park’s Ian Earl speaks to Cameron Palmer

With club origins that date back 114 years, few clubs in the Perth Football League can match the Mosman Park Football Club for unique history.

Having commenced as Cottesloe Beach, before taking on the name Mosman Park when it became a suburb in 1946, the club has competed with distinction in different competitions in the Perth metropolitan area and different grades within the Perth Football League.

Within the Perth Football League, the club has won numerous premierships at different grades including an A Grade premiership in 1951. But perhaps its most famous premiership came with a B Grade premiership in 1973 as part of an undefeated campaign.

Due to a long standing League rule that a Colts team is required to play in A Grade, the club found itself relegated to B Grade for the 1973 season.  Despite being competitive in A Grade the preceding season, the club had no option but to play a grade lower.

Mosman Park would dominant that season, going through the year undefeated and winning the Grand Final against University comfortably.

Despite being a clearly dominant B Grade side in 1973 and despite being Premiers, Mosman Park were going to be faced with relegation to C Grade in 1974 as they again were unable to field a Colts team. Rather than suffer that fate, Mosman Park moved to the Sunday Football League where they competed for a number of years before eventually moving back to the Perth Football League.

A player at the time, and someone who would go on to be Club President, Ian Earl, still remembers those years and the decision the club was faced with.

“In hindsight we should have gone to C Grade, won a few more Grand Finals and perhaps gotten back into A Grade,’ Earl said.

“But we couldn’t get that Colts team.”

Having returned to the Perth Football League, it was Earl who after becoming Club President was adamant that the club needed to embrace the nearby junior club and develop a Colts program to lead to further and more wide reaching club success.

“The club was struggling player wise but we had a very strong junior club and I became President with one aim in mind and that was to get the two clubs back together again and have a pathway from the Mosman Park juniors to the Mosman Park Senior Football Club,” Earl said.

“It’s taken a long time. It’s taken 13 years but one by one they have embraced the place and now they are a full on feature here at the club.”

This commitment to the junior club and establishing a Colts program has reaped the ultimate benefit for Earl and the Mosman Park Football Club. In 2020, the club won a C3 Premiership, with a league side made up of predominantly home grown players who had developed through the Mosman Park colts program and started out playing with the Mosman Park juniors.

The club has now come full circle.

After being forced into relegation in the 1970’s because of a lack of Colts, some 50 years later as the club heads to the 2020’s, it is the Colts program that is leading to promotion. It is this newly established culture and embracing of a family community that Earl hopes will define the future years of the club.

“This year was like winding back the clock,” Earl said.

“If you came here on a home game you could see neighbourhood families with juniors watching the seniors play, it was marvellous.”