Sports journalist Toby Prime has written a new book, “Famous Flags: Great Local Grand Finals”, which covers the Boort Football Club’s 2008 premiership coached by Echuca’s Ashley Byrne.
Ashley Byrne didn’t expect to be leading Boort Football Club to a premiership, but when tragedy struck in 2008, duty called the Echuca local.
Hold tight - we’re checking permissions before loading more content
In pre-season the Boort community was rocked when its senior football coach Haldane Nelson died after being involved in a car accident travelling from his work in Echuca to a training session at the club.
Nelson was a teacher at St Joseph’s College at the time and was familiar to Byrne, given the Echuca native had grown up at Boort.
Amid the shock and sadness that Nelson’s death had brought to the community, the immediate priority of appointing a new coach remained, particularly with the season only a few weeks from starting.
Byrne attended Nelson’s funeral and, not long after, he sought an update on the search; after all, he had a vested interest having long been connected to the Magpies.
Boort’s president at the time was Byrne’s brother-in-law Tim, who said that a replacement had yet to be found, paving the way for Byrne to offer his services, which the club accepted.
Coming in as an interim, Byrne had a Boort squad under his tutelage that decided at the funeral to attempt to win the 2008 North Central League premiership for its previous coach.
What happened next was nothing short of extraordinary.
Boort went on to lose one game in the regular season that year.
In the post-season, the Magpies lost an initial qualifying final against a Wedderburn outfit aiming for consecutive flags, before they eventually won through to the big dance via a preliminary final against Birchip-Watchem.
Wedderburn would be the opponent again in the grand final, with Byrne’s players a win away from honouring Nelson in the best way they could.
Boort was down by two goals at three-quarter time before it rallied with a dominant final term, overturning the deficit and winning by 15 points, with Byrne noting a strong breeze that worked in the Magpies’ favour.
The premiership occurred six years on from when Byrne coached Echuca to the Goulburn Valley League flag in 2002, and it’s a period he looks back on with great fondness.
“My reflections on that was just how proud I was to have been a Boort person and to be back involved in the community and the club, and to go through that year and then to win the grand final was a great reward for a lot of hard work for a lot of the locals,” Byrne said.
“It was a beautiful time after a tragic start to it all.”
The Boort community had an undeniable sense of duty to rally around the side after the tragedy. Byrne wasn’t the only one who returned.
One player, Brett Jeffrey, relinquished the captaincy at a club in Melbourne after the accident, feeling it appropriate to travel back from the city every Friday to play for his local club instead. Jeffrey ended up winning the league medal.
The great lengths the players went to in honouring Nelson extended to embroidering their jumpers with 11 (the number he wore as a player) and the name “Whitey”, that Nelson was affectionately known by.
The 2008 success is significant because of the story behind it, but also because premierships were a rarity for Boort, with the flag still being only the second it has won since 1954.
It’s also a flag that will be covered by sports journalist Toby Prime in Famous Flags: Great Local Grand Finals, a new 14-chapter book taking a closer look at a range of historic football grand finals from across Victoria.
Prime, who has previously covered football for publications such as the Geelong Advertiser, Leader and the Sunraysia Daily, has been working on the book for the past two years.
He spoke to Byrne for the section on Boort’s flag, where the former Echuca president provides insights into the year that was.
“He (Byrne) thought it was his time to return to Boort, they needed someone to step in; incredibly selfless Ash is, I don't claim to know Ash well, only through this project, but incredibly modest,” Prime said.
“He's totally undersold what he did for the club and the town that year in stepping in as coach, particularly given that at the time of the accident and that he stepped in as coach, his wife was heavily pregnant with their sixth child.
“The family would load up the Toyota Tarago every week and travel, they'd go to St Arnaud and obviously Boort and Birchip and other north central towns.”
Boort’s Sam Gross is also the main player depicted on the front cover, celebrating with his premiership medal.
It’s an image Prime picked because he felt Gross’ emotion perfectly encapsulated what grand finals are all about.
Boort’s 2008 premiership player Sam Gross features on the front cover of "Famous Flags: Great Local Grand Finals".
Another big dance covered is the controversial 1990 Picola District Football League decider between Waaia and Blighty.
9°C