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The Tigers have empowered Club Legend Michael Goiser to assist promote the Tigers 90 Year celebrations by way of producing an article of history on a weekly basis throughout the 2014 Season. Each article will appear in the Queanbeyan Age.
The article will be reproduced in the Growlers Publication each week and on our website www.tigersclub.com.au
Below is Column #01
90 Years of the Queanbeyan Tigers
2014 represents the 90th year of the Queanbeyan Tigers Australian Football Club. This column aims to enlighten readers on the club’s history, from its humble beginnings in 1925 to its current participation in the developing North-East Australian Football League, known as the NEAFL. The NEAFL sees clubs from Canberra/Queanbeyan, Sydney, Gold Coast, Brisbane and Northern Territory compete against AFL Reserves teams in a competition just one step down from the AFL.
Queanbeyan can lay claim to a large part of the game’s history and probably the most important interstate recruit the game has ever seen when Thomas Wentworth Wills, the so-called founder of Australian Rules football, was born at Molonglo in the Queanbeyan district in 1835. Wills later moved to Victoria and was responsible for drawing up the first Laws of the Game.
Although Wills was born in the district, little is known about football in the region prior to 1911. The occasional games in 1912 and 1913 saw members of Royal Military College, Duntroon (RMC) pit themselves against the Department of Home Affairs. In 1915 RMC played a team from Canberra. By 1916 the nation’s attention had turned to the First World War and there was little football played in the region for many years.
After the war the Canberra Football Club was formed in 1922 and in 1923 three teams played ad-hoc matches – Duntroon, Canberra and Federal. In 1924 Acton joined these three and the Canberra Football League was formed to organise regular competition matches.
In this current age of social media it should be relatively easy to put a new sporting team together. An email here, a Facebook post there, and a tweet or two and soon you should have enough interest to form a new team.
But spare a thought for Wal Mason and other members of his family Stan, Fred and Joe, who in 1925 put the word out that they were forming the first ever Queanbeyan Australian Rules Football team. No doubt, getting the message out back then wasn’t as easy as it is these days.
The fledgling club came together and elected its first officials in early 1925 and commenced the season soon after. Players living within a two mile radius were eligible to play for Queanbeyan.
Throughout 2014 this column will explore 90 years of successes, controversies and developments that have brought the club to where it is today.