A COLLECTION of Bendigo VFL memorabilia thought to be long gone has been discovered at the Shamrock Hotel.
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Team and individual player photos, framed jumpers and scrapbooks of newspaper articles detailing the formation of the Bendigo Diggers and their early seasons are among the hidden gems that have been recovered ahead of Bendigo's last VFL game at the QEO on Friday night.
"Probably a week ago we never knew any of this stuff existed. We had always heard there may have been some stuff at the Shamrock. We got in touch with them and it was all tucked up in a room in the Shamrock," Bendigo Gold chairman Tim Dickson said.
"We've found a lot of photos and there's a great archive of newspaper articles going back to the Diggers' days, and it's interesting to see the issues they faced in terms of building infrastructure are the same as what we've had the past couple of years."
Dickson's office this week has been cluttered with the memorabilia, with the question now of what will become of the collection?
"We've had an offer from one of the leading Bendigo league clubs that they will set aside some room in their clubrooms to hang some of it. We need to speak to them about it again, but we'll probably take them up on it," Dickson said.
"There has been nowhere to hang stuff... we haven't had a home and we haven't got a home moving forward, but we wouldn't want this memorabilia to be lost again. We'd love to be able to display it somewhere."