The Corio Oval Tribe: a Prosopographical Perspective of the Geelong Football Club in the Nineteenth Century

1 The Corio Oval Tribe: A Prosopographical Perspective of the Geelong Football Club in the Nineteenth Century Mark Pennings is a senior lecturer in Art & Design at Queensland University of Technology. Email: [email protected] Robert Pascoe is Dean Laureate and a Professor of History at Victoria University, Melbourne. Email: [email protected] ABSTRACT: Geelong, Victoria’s second city, soon lost out in the competition with Melbourne to dominate the young colony formed in 1851. The ‘Pivot City’ continued to serve as the entrepot for Victoria’s squattocracy based in the lush Western District of the colony, but failed to capitalise on the wealth generated by Victoria’s famous goldrushes of the 1850s. However, an important aspect of Geelong’s cultural identity was its Australian Rules football club in 1859, which was supported by squatting families and was soon based at Corio Oval. The success of this club proved to be important to the psyche of the city, and that success began in 1878 after the demise of its working‐class rival, Barwon Football Club, and when a wider cross‐section of players was added to the Geelong Football Club ‘tribe’. Introduction One of the unsolved puzzles of Australian Rules football history is the consistent success of the Geelong Football Club. The new code of football proved popular in all four southern colonies of Australia, but in none of the other regional centres (including Kalgoorlie/Boulder in Western Australia) did a non‐metropolitan club prove as successful as Geelong. And, as one of the Victorian Football League’s eight foundation clubs of 1897, Geelong also eclipsed football‐mad Ballarat, which had boasted up to four clubs during the colonial period, but failed to win a place in the champion competition. Geelong’s first three seasons of football in the early 1860s were promising, but the team’s performance fell away until 1878, when it won the first of three successive flags. Another trio of flags in 1882‐1883‐1884 was followed by a premiership in 1886, meaning that by the time of the formation of the VFL a decade 2 later, Geelong had seven premierships to its credit. Our prosopographical analysis of the Geelong playing group will reveal startling differences in the teams from both periods. Comparing 1859‐ 1878 with 1879‐1896 will demonstrate a fundamental sea change at Corio Oval.1 The town of Geelong The town of Geelong was founded by squatters, for squatters, in the late 1830s. Being placed at the western end of Port Phillip Bay, and with its own (Corio) bay, it was ideally situated to benefit from Victoria’s rapidly expanding pastoral industries. With thousands of sheep the squatters established profitable runs on rich pastoral lands, both in the Geelong region and in the Western District, and these pastoralists saw Geelong as their primary market centre. Consequently, a close rural and urban partnership developed between them and Geelong’s prosperity grew in large part due to its expertise in wool storage, processing, marketing, selling and exporting. Geelong developed rapidly and this fostered a belief that it could outdo its sister town Melbourne and become the colony’s first city. This ambition was reflected in the appellation “Pivot City”, a term first employed in the late 1840s in the Geelong Advertiser. This newspaper claimed that ‘Geelong was the pivot on which the commerce of Port Phillip District turned’.2 It was acknowledged that Melbourne was older and more populated; that it attracted more government investment, and was the administrative capital of the Port Phillip District. Geelong however considered itself to be the region’s commercial capital because of the prodigious economic growth it experienced during that decade. This claim was substantiated in 1848 when Geelong’s exports exceeded Melbourne’s and the Geelong Advertiser declared ‘Let Melbourne be the seat of Government, Geelong must be the pivot on which the Commercial World turns. Melbourne may have an aristocracy, we shall have our Merchant Princes.’3 This commercial advantage over Melbourne was extremely important to the burgeoning Pivot and established a rivalry between the two centres that would continue for over a decade on the economic front and for many more years on the football field. By 1851 Geelong had become a town of considerable importance. It was one of the largest centres in Australia and its port was often busier than Melbourne’s. When gold was discovered at Ballarat the 3 town’s future seemed even brighter given its place as the natural ‘gateway’ to the diggings. Geelong was almost 50 kilometres nearer the goldfields than Melbourne and so expected to gain most from the traffic that made its way there. Geelong’s sense of entitlement in relation to the ‘quartzopolis’ was expressed by historian Geoffrey Serle: in the 1850s ‘The people of Geelong regarded Ballarat as their goldfield, and saw it as a guarantee of the town’s future greatness and its predominance over Melbourne.’4 Like Melbourne, Geelong was deserted by many of its inhabitants (about 2,000) for the goldfields, but the town was known as the “Liverpool of Australia” and during the 1850s many immigrants landed there on their way to the goldfields. Local businesses thrived and retail sales soared as customers purchased provisions on the way to the diggings; squatters were also regular clients. Geelong was also ideally placed between the Western District’s abundant primary industries and Melbourne’s dominant consumer market. By the end of the gold rush, however, Geelong had missed the opportunity to seriously threaten Melbourne’s place as the main metropolis in Victoria. During the gold decade Geelong continued to profit from the pastoral industry, but Melbourne had done much better and soon became the preferred destination for many wool sales, a privileged position it would maintain for the rest of the century. Geelong could no longer compete and population figures tell the tale in this regard: between 1850 and 1860 Geelong’s population grew from 8,000 to 23,000, but Melbourne saw an increase from 23,000 to 125,000. Moreover, in 1851 Geelong had 10.7 per cent of Victoria’s population but by 1861 this declined to 4.1 per cent and fell further to 2.4 per cent by 1891.5 A number of factors prevented Geelong from overtaking Melbourne. In 1852, Geelong’s business leaders decided to construct a rail line to Melbourne in the hope of bringing overseas prospectors directly through their pivot town. The construction of the railway, however, was fraught with problems and a direct line was not properly established until January 1859. The project also proved to be extremely costly, so much so that it was soon sold to the Government. In 1848 Geelong had become a free port but the railway line to Melbourne did not deliver increased trade or persuade shippers to unload their produce at Corio Bay. It had in fact the contrary effect, as the railway to Melbourne encouraged growers to transport their agricultural products directly to the capital for export because it had the superior port. Corio Bay contained sandbars that prevented deep‐sea sailing ships from 4 approaching the town, and ships were forced to anchor six kilometres away at Point Henry. During this period the sandbars could not be satisfactorily dredged and the town leaders could not solicit enough Government support to rectify the problem. Geelong’s wharfage accommodation and docking facilities were also inadequate.6 Petty conflicts among the town’s political cliques also contributed to its difficulties and the failure to establish a Harbour Trust hindered proper management of shipping. Geelong provided the first Victorian premier (W.C. Haines) and treasurer (Charles Sladen), but at a crucial time in its history poor local government hampered the town’s development. By the time an entrance way was cut into a Point Henry sandbar in 1861 Geelong had already lost its advantage.7 A rail link to Ballarat was completed in 1862 but by this time most trade had already shifted to Melbourne so this new connection made little difference (although Melbourne’s rail traffic had to pass through Geelong to Ballarat until 1889). Geelong possessed diverse and export‐oriented manufacturing industries in paper production, leather goods, woollen fabric, preserved meat and boot making, which were mainly produced by enterprises along the Barwon River. These businesses however could not easily compete with Melbourne’s economies of scale. Geelong paid a considerable price for these shortcomings: after the gold rush it experienced a prolonged period of stagnation in many areas. Between the 1870s and 1890s Geelong’s population declined from 14,000 to 11,500, and it took until 1901 for the town to reach the population figures it had achieved during the gold rushes. By the 1870s, gold and a sustainable manufacturing sector enabled Ballarat to outgrow Geelong and the former became a city in 1870 (as did Bendigo, known as Sandhurst, in 1871). Remarkably, Geelong did not attain this status until 1910. For a town once known ‘as a go‐ahead and enterprising depot’ this was a sobering fall from grace. Geelong continued to lag behind Melbourne for the rest of the century. Melbourne bested Geelong in all major infrastructure projects during this time. Geelong piped water into the town from 1874 whereas Melbourne had achieved the same feat in 1857; Geelong established a gas supply in 1861, but Melbourne did this five years earlier. In 1900‐01 Geelong established a general electricity supply, which Melbourne had established six years earlier, and the town’s telephone exchange opened in 1888, eight years after Melbourne’s.

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