Surviving and thriving: Cats, Dogs show what life after the BFNL can hold

The Magpies have informed their members and supporters that they have "resolved to investigate moving to another league", with the options to either continue to stand alone or seek to merge.

"We have continued to see a decline in our senior football performance this season and we were not able to field an A Grade netball side this year," the club wrote in its information update.

"The club has been trying to correct this situation for more than a decade to no avail.

"The committee has determined that our current situation is unsustainable and failure to act will be severely detrimental to the sustainability of the club."

The decision made by the Magpies to look outside the BFNL for 2025 comes after years of on-field struggles and declining player numbers that has this year reached the point where the club has had to forfeit its reserves for the past three matches and its senior side has lost its past 51 games.

The 50th of those losses on the trot to Sandhurst on May 4 by 333 points was the biggest defeat in the history of the BFNL.

These days North Bendigo is a thriving club in the Heathcote District Football Netball League both on and off the field, but just like Maryborough now, the Bulldogs faced their crossroads moment in 1995 when they simply could no longer compete in the BFNL.

While it wasn't at the magnitude of the on-field plight Maryborough is enduring, the Bulldogs went 0-18 in their final BFNL season in 1995 with an average losing margin of 152 points.

A former power of the Golden City league, North Bendigo spent 13 seasons in the BFNL between 1983 and 1995, which included five years with either one (1987, 1989, 1990) or zero (1988, 1995) wins.

The Bulldogs made the finals in their first season in 1983 and were competitive for the next two years before the decline started in 1986.

"Reflecting on our last year in the Bendigo league in 1995, by that stage it was a diabolical situation for the club," North Bendigo stalwart, and current vice president, Scott Pysing said on Wednesday.

"We were literally the punching bag of the competition and a laughing stock in many people's eyes and that didn't set well with us proud North Bendigo people.

"We just didn't have the finances to lure the recruits we needed to rise up the ladder and not only that, overhead fees in a major league are more significant, which added to the challenges the club faced.

"I've read this week about Maryborough's Princes Park once being a fortress during the 1990s and that was similar to North Bendigo's Atkins Street during the late '70s and early '80s, but come 1995 it certainly wasn't a fortress any more.

"As our performance on the field tailed off, so too did our supporter base. Our home crowds really dwindled with the interest no longer there because who wants to go and watch a team get hammered every week and I assume something similar has probably happened with Maryborough as well.

"Once your supporter base slackens off it's severely minimising your revenue-raising opportunities as well and it felt through that time that our fibre and identity as a club was disappearing and it was also hard to maintain and develop a good culture when it feels like things are in such a diabolical state as they were."

Since departing the BFNL after 1995 North Bendigo has gone on to thrive in the HDFNL, with the decision to move leagues spearheaded by the late Keith Robertson.

"There was a crisis meeting called at the end of 1994 and the club was going to fold then," Pysing said.

"However, Keith and his loyal band of followers wouldn't allow that to happen and took over in 1995, which was the difficult year we had to endure before we were accepted into the Heathcote District league in 1996."

The Bulldogs were instantly competitive in the HDFNL, making the finals in year one when they bowed out to Huntly in the first semi by 20 points, before another first semi loss, this time against Elmore, in 1997.

But just three years after their winless 1995 season in the BFNL in 1998 the Bulldogs played off in the HDFNL grand final against Colbinabbin.

The Bulldogs lost the grand final by 58 points, but it was a remarkable turnaround in a short timeframe given they dark times they had been through prior in the BFNL.

Once a club that was on the brink of extinction in a league that it became out of its depth in, nowadays across the Bendigo, Heathcote District and Loddon Valley leagues North Bendigo is the club that is on the longest run of consecutive senior finals appearances.

Excluding the COVID-affected 2020 and 2021 years when there were no finals played - or any games for that matter in 2020 - the Bulldogs have played in every HDFNL senior finals series since 2009.

Throughout that period the Bulldogs have contested seven grand finals and won three flags.

Since 2010 North Bendigo as a club has won 11 premierships across all its grades of football (six) and netball (five) and certainly looks like it will be right in the hunt again for this year's senior flag.

"We really haven't looked back since we joined the HDFNL," Pysing said.

"We made the senior finals in our first year in the competition in 1996 and our reserves actually played off in the grand final against Mount Pleasant, so that helped to give an injection of enthusiasm as well and to be honest, the joint was just jumping again.

"Subsequently, it became easier to retain players and I've read about the issues Maryborough has had with its player retention.

"As history would show, we've now become a destination club for recruits. Look at 2014 onwards, there's names like Darcy Richards, Michael Leech, Tyson Findlay, Brady Herdman, Sam Barnes, Brett Strange, Joel Helman, Troy Kelm, Jarrod Findlay, Jeremy Mills... the list goes on.

"We got our fibre back and our culture again became strong... and we got our fortress back as well with an unbelievable home record in particular since 2014 (67 wins from 72 games).

"But what is really important with our club prospering is we have been able to showcase our history through past players and reunions, our inaugural Hall of Fame in 2015 and by embracing our history it has helped galvanise our club.

"Had we folded or amalgamated we would have lost our identity and history and the joy of recent success would never have been experienced.

"I strongly encourage Maryborough to fight the good fight and just like we have at Atkins Street, there can be a time when Maryborough will one day get its Princes Park fortress back."

While North Bendigo hasn't looked back after making the move from the BFNL into the HDFNL, neither has Lockington-Bamawm United.

The dairy community Cats had a short-lived four-season stay in the Bendigo league between 1997 and 2000 after needing to find a new home following the disbandment of the Northern and Echuca league in 1996.

Some clubs headed to the Murray league, others joined Central Murray, while the Cats - who had made two grand finals the previous three seasons - took up the offer to join the Bendigo league.

The Cats' debut season in the Bendigo league was certainly encouraging, yielding a first-up finals appearance - just as North Bendigo had done 14 years earlier in 1983.

However, after finishing fifth and sixth in 1997 (7-10) and 1998 (6-10) the Cats won just one of their 34 games across the 1999 and 2000 seasons before the decision was made that the club needed to look elsewhere.

"When we went into the Bendigo league we had some senior success early, but it was no good for the junior aspect of our club," said Darryl Jensen, a former president of the Cats who was also involved with the club during its BFNL chapter.

"We had an under-14 side and then we had to jump to under-18s after that to play in the Bendigo league.

"Understandably, a lot of the parents thought the gap was just too great, so what happened was families started drifting away and playing in under-16 or under-17 competitions elsewhere.

"Once they leave it's hard to get them back and we felt it probably took three years before it really started to stand out that we no longer had the juniors coming through to be anywhere near competitive.

"We understood that the parents didn't want their kids coming out of the under-14s basically playing against young men in the under-18s and we just didn't have the population where ideally you would have had an under-16 side and then an under-18 side in the Bendigo league.

"And then after that our reserves players started to drift away and it really did start to waver.

"I remember at the time there were people on one side of the fence saying, we only have to raise an extra $50,000 and we could be competitive in the Bendigo league.

"But you've got to be able to raise that extra $50,000 every year, not just one year and we still had the issue with our juniors and if I recall correctly, I don't think the netball suited our grades either.

"So as a family club, which we were, we just found it too hard."

The Cats' average losing margin in their winless final season in the Bendigo league in 2000 was 98 points, but just 12 months later after moving to a more suitable "weight division" a new lease of life was instilled into the club.

Just as North Bendigo had done by enduring a winless final season in the Bendigo league in 1995 and copping hammering after hammering to playing finals in its first year in the HDFNL, so too did the Cats.

The Cats bowed out of the finals in their inaugural HDFNL season in straight sets in 2001, before playing off in the 2002 grand final against Colbinabbin where they lost by 25 points.

From a senior perspective, since joining the HDFNL the former cellar dweller of the BFNL Cats have contested 16 of a possible 21 senior finals series, won five premierships - including a four-peat between 2011 and 2014 - and would have been the favourites to win both flags in the COVID-affected 2020 and 2021 years.

In 2011 the Cats became the HDFNL's first club since Stanhope in 1976 to win the trifecta of the senior, reserves and under-18 premierships, while since 2010 only White Hills with 26 has won more than LBU's 16 flags across both football (nine) and netball (seven).

"It was certainly most beneficial for the club after 2000 to go to a district league," Jensen said.

"As a club the move has just helped us grow and there's now something like seven netball sides, seniors, reserves and under-18s football sides and then junior football sides as well on top of that.

"They're not strong in every grade, but a lot stronger than they would have been had they still been trying to compete in the Bendigo league."

While the Cats and Bulldogs provide long-term examples of a club being on its knees in the Bendigo league ultimately being able to not only survive, but thrive after making the decision to move elsewhere, Kyneton is in its infancy of experiencing life after the BFNL.

The Tigers - who had a connection with the Bendigo league that dated back to the 1930s - are in their first year competing in the Riddell District league after making the decision in August last year that their time in the BFNL was up.

"Firstly for Maryborough, the community has got to prove that they want the club. You've got to have the community support, which we had," Kyneton president Hayden Evans said on Wednesday when reflecting on his club's move.

"If we didn't make the decision we made we as a club feel we'd be in exactly the same spot as Maryborough is now, or worse.

"That doesn't reflect in our results (the Tigers were 9-9 last year and 10-8 the previous year), but just where we felt the BFNL's regional teams were at as far as being able to compete with the more heavily-populated towns.

"Geographical area, population and the points system are three things all working against the regional clubs.

"Compared to when we were in the Bendigo league, we've got much more community support, revenue is significantly up and that's coming from a major league to a so-called minor league and participation is up as far as player numbers; we couldn't be happier.

"We're looking at the next 10 years being one of growth instead of fighting for survival every week."

The Tigers' senior team is 3-3 and fifth on the RDFL ladder.