The small country footy club that made headlines for losing refuses to give up.

On a recent Wednesday afternoon, with a faltering sun streaking through creaky gum trees, Daryl Hore took the usual dusty turn-off to Wahgunyah Football Netball Club with an unusual feeling. 

The churning sense of dread, at times a feature of the club president's past two years, was gone.

In its place, an unlikely rumble of optimism and more than a bit of pride.

For a man built like a bouncer with the voice of a cement mixer, it was a lot to process.

"To see this tonight, I can't quite believe it," Hore said, scanning the football ground in awe.

What he found himself staring at were people — kids, adults, men, women. A chaotic assembly of familiar faces and new friends. A community.

For the small town on the banks of the Murray River in north-eastern Victoria, that hasn't been something to take for granted.

Headlines and heartbreak

There were times when Hore would arrive at training with modest hopes of perhaps seeing 15 football players running about, only to find less than half of that.

The seniors team had become stuck in a feedback loop of failure.

Already struggling to find players in a post-lockdown climate, the club started recording losses with almost maths-defying margins.

Preserved in the grainy Facebook archive, there was the 318-point drubbing to Chiltern in April 2022. 

Two weeks later, "the Beechworth game".

Over four demoralising quarters, the visitors piled on 66 goals and 36 behinds for a staggering 432 points (the scoreboard volunteer missed one of the behinds). 

In response, Wahgunyah managed one solitary point. 

The result made headlines and TV bulletins around Australia.

Broadcasters like 3AW's Neil Mitchell praised the club's stoicism, but "keyboard commandos" —  Hore's term — gleefully shared the result, questioning if the team was one of the worst in the country.

"It was heartbreaking for the club," he said.

It's the sort of result that can haunt a community, but the attention at least brought with it some brief moments of uplift.

Legendary coach Mick Malthouse paid a morale-boosting visit to the club, while former AFL players Jason Akermanis, Jared Brennan and Harley Bennell turned out for a one-off game in 2023.

Wahgunyah lost that match by a comparatively narrow 28-point margin. More enduring change was needed.

If two years averaging 200+ point losses was a hard sell for players, it became a hard watch for supporters, too.

For some, staying home was the easier option.

That meant less money at the gate, at the canteen, behind the bar.

It meant fewer families to fill out junior teams.

It meant a big problem for a small club. 

Fight or flight

On the edge of town, the smell of farmers burning off paddocks blends with a biscuity perfume.

The Uncle Toby's factory juts out imposingly on the Wahgunyah landscape, eating up a sizeable chunk of the town's footprint.

When Wes Canny first started working there in the mid-1990s, he had over 1,000 colleagues. 

Now there are fewer than 500. 

"There's been a lot of money spent on automation," said Canny, a life member of the club and former Citizen of the Year.

Fewer jobs meant fewer faces around the football oval, and desperation saw weeks where new players were recruited from building sites the night before a game.

That lack of numbers, combined with dwindling finances, saw the club questioning whether it could — or should — survive.

There are some communities where the collapse of the local football club would hold ominous parallels for the very future of a town, but that is not necessarily Wahgunyah's story.

Its population of about 1,000 might not be increasing, and there are only a handful of ways to spend money in the quiet main street.

Yet a single-lane bridge over the Murray River is all that separates the town from the comparatively bustling Corowa, with multiple pubs, cafes, shops and a population five times greater.

There are two other football and netball clubs within 10 kilometres of Wahgunyah.

So why turn up, fight struggle after struggle, bear witness to defeat after dispiriting defeat, just to keep the club alive?

It's something Tim Saunders mulls over a milky country coffee in a Corowa cafe.

"For some, it's the history of the club. It's a club that's been there since the 1880s, and it's our turn to keep the lights on," said Saunders, who is on the committee.

Club turns to its people

To outsiders, the money involved in country football might seem strange.

Clubs are often run like small businesses and in the Tallangatta & District Football League where Wahgunyah plays, the salary cap for players runs up to $72,500.

The club has tried to be innovative — even running cattle on leased land around the football ground to raise funds.

With just a few local businesses to draw on for sponsorship, there's still no chance of being able to compete with other clubs for player signatures.

Instead, president Hore turned inward to the club's most valuable resource — its people.

There was real meaning to be found in those words on the eve of the first game of the season.

Sitting in the late afternoon shade, a team of under-14 boys — the first to be fielded in years  — listened attentively to club stalwart Brennan Doody.

"We want to get the best out of yourselves as footballers, but more than that, we want to get the most out of you as young people," he told them.

"That means on and off the field. Your parents all know they can leverage that and if you're not behaving at school or at home, you could miss a game." 

Across the 50-metre arc, a newly formed all-abilities group were holding their second training session.

"A football club should be for everyone, including people with disabilities," said Wayne Cooper, a volunteer with a background in community services.

"It's also about the social aspect, not only for the participants but for their families as well. They are just as much part of the club as everybody else."

Behind the clubrooms, a small army of young girls contorted themselves in ankle-breaking manoeuvres around the netball courts.

"This is their social scene out of school," said Wahgunyah netball coach Lauren Connell.

"This is where the bonding happens."

As for the older footballers, roughly 50 seniors and reserves combined for a sweat-soaked final run out — more than five times the number found at some training sessions last year.

A new rule of recruitment was already bearing fruit — what Saunders calls the barbecue test.

"The first question we ask now is not whether you can play footy, but are you the right bloke? Would we have you around for a barbecue?" he said.

"There's been a few that we wouldn't and we've just walked away from them."

Hot roast lamb rolls served by lifelong volunteers greeted the families who gathered for a combined netball and football presentation.

An electricity pinged about the room. This wasn't a club on the brink. This felt like a thrilling lift-off.

"I think we've just changed the atmosphere, we've changed the feel around the place," Hore said.

"We just want to make it a great place for people to be."

A new dawn

As fate, or a clever bit of scheduling would have it, Wahgunyah's first game of the season on Good Friday was against near neighbours and sometimes rivals, Rutherglen.

In 2023, Rutherglen's seniors team only won one match (no prizes for guessing against whom).

At one low point last year, Wahgunyah suggested merging with Rutherglen, only to have its advances rejected. 

"It's a bit like asking a girl for a dance and getting knocked back. I suppose you've just got to move on," said Canny, before taking up his match day duties as a trainer and strapper.

Wahgunyah hadn't won a seniors' football match since before the pandemic, but there were the quietest murmurs that perhaps, just maybe, this could be its day. 

"When we won the premiership in 1997, the place went off. It was just fantastic," said Glenda Johnstone, club life member and canteen wrangler.

"Just to win one game now, oh my god — it would be like a premiership again!"

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