An unlikely alliance
Stirling’s Dave Downing speaks to Chris Egan
For the Stirling Football Club, it was a season like no other and one that is unprecedented in the 100 year history of the Perth Football League.
1998, the first season of a new amalgamated club and two unlikely partners taking all before them.
While now known as Stirling, the club did not take on this name until 2002. For the four years prior to this, after founding in 1998, Stirling was known as Osborne Park Balcatta. As that name would suggest, this was very much two sides quickly becoming one.
In 1997 the Osborne Park Football Club would compete in the Sunday Football League slumping to the wooden spoon. Having struggled to remain competitive in its final seasons with the Sunday Football League they were looking for a new start in the then named Western Australian Amateur Football League.
At this same time in 1997, Balcatta Football Club were competing in B Grade in the same Western Australian Amateur Football League. While they were a competitive on-field outfit, they needed an upgraded home ground due to the state of their then home at Jones Paskin Reserve.
For Osborne Park, rather than joining amateurs at D Grade, it would make sense to join an already existing B Grade club. For Balcatta it made sense to join forces with another club and move to the better suited Richard Guelfi Reserve.
And with that, an unlikely alliance was born.
It was an alliance though, that would have instant success. As current Stirling President David Downing recalls, that first season was an unforgettable one.
“The merger of Balcatta Osborne Park occurred in 1998,” Downing said.
“In the first year of the merger we won a reserves and a league premiership.”
Given that Balcatta had finished second in B Grade in 1997 and Osborne Park had a strong list coming from a powerful Sunday Football League at the time, perhaps the season result should not have been so much of a surprise. Yet, it still required a skill to bring the two clubs together and under league coach Kevin Caton, both the league and reserves teams would each only lose two games for the year heading into finals and both claimed minor premierships.
Unexpectedly, both the league and reserves sides would lose their respective second semi finals, forced to win cut-throat preliminary finals, just to make it to the 1998 Grand Finals. They would both do that, and atone for the losses on Grand Final day, with the league side beating Hamersley Carine by 44 points and the reserves side winning by 72 points over Bassendean.
It was the perfect end, to what had been a perfect first season for the new Stirling Football Club.
For Downing to be President of a club that had that moment and that season as its introduction, means it is still a special feeling to be involved at a club that people still remember and are still passionate about.
“People still come up to me and ask how’s Stirling going?” Downing said.
“This place is a labour of love for me, been a passion of mine since I was a kid.”