Club of the week: Queanbeyan Tigers

By James Matthey

The Tigers have started their 2013 campaign in sensational fashion with six straight wins, and will be hoping to repeat last year’s heroics when they were crowned NEAFL premiers.

The club has 14 First Grade premierships to its name since being established in 1925, but General Manager, Ron Fowlie, said the 2012 Grand Final triumph was one of the most significant moments in the club’s colourful history.

“It’s probably regarded as one of the best premiership wins the club has ever had,” said Fowlie.

“It was significant in the fact that we blooded a lot of young players in 2011 and only won four games in the process, but those guys took the next step and we were able to achieve something that we probably didn’t think we would do within a short period of time.”

Boasting teams from Auskick and Under-8s right through to their Under-18s program and two senior teams, the Tigers rely on junior talent to bolster the local ranks, something which Fowlie said was a strong focus of the club.

“It really is extremely important (developing juniors) in the scheme of things, trying to recruit players into Canberra is a difficult proposition… we’ve tried to promote our junior organisations really well,” said Fowlie.

“We really look after our Under-18s team as best we possibly can so that those players do progress into our two senior grade teams.

“The fact that we’ve got a really good culture in the footy club is something we try to extend right through to our juniors.”

The Queanbeyan club hasn’t always been in such good shape, though, suffering numerous financial and organisational crises in its 88-year history.

The Tigers were forced to disband completely on three separate occasions in 1927, 1929 and 1945, while there were ill-fated mergers with Acton, once in 1942 and again in 1952, and with Turner in 1966.

Fowlie knows better than most the difficulties the club has faced, having been involved with Queanbeyan for approximately 40 years.

However, he could not be more proud of the way the club has rebounded from those setbacks to stand today as an important pillar in the Queanbeyan community.

“I’ve been around the club for around about 40 years now so during that period of time we’ve had some very tough times, particularly in the early days when we didn’t have a licensed club or a home ground, so we’ve worked really hard to develop our community based football club.

“We’ve had some extremely difficult times but it’s been enjoyable to get through those and now we’re reaping our rewards of a lot of effort from a lot of people.

The 1980s proved to be a turning point for Queanbeyan’s fortunes, successfully relocating to a home ground in South Queanbeyan in 1980, acquiring a liquor license in 1982 and opening a licensed premises in 1983.

“The footy club’s been a reasonably successful club for the last 30 years I’d suggest since we moved to Dairy Farmers Park and built our licensed club, and we’ve tried to revolve ourselves around both those areas of our footy club.”

Fowlie pointed to the recent introduction of a women’s team as an example of how far Queanbeyan has come since those dark days.

“Our ladies’ team only been in place for the last three years, they’ve really added a new dimension to the football club, particularly their involvement at functions and on training nights, so it is really important to have the women involved in footy these days and they’re part and parcel of whatever we try and do as a football club.”

While some more premierships are certainly on the wish-list for the Queanbeyan Tigers, Fowlie is adamant that the club will be in good stead as long as it continues its strong engagement with the local community.

“All we want to be is a successful, community-based football club and try and make finals each year, and whatever happens after that is a bonus for us.

“We just want to make sure that we’ve got a good football club that young people want to be involved in.”

The Queanbeyan Tigers’ next match will be against Belconnen at Kippax Oval, starting at 2:00pm on Saturday May 4.