The Greythorn Football Club we know today has existed in many forms for over thirty years.
A merger of two local teams that played in the Doncaster District Junior Football League formed the present club. The Greythorn Balwyn YMCA Football Club (GBYFC) was formed prior to the 1976 football season after a joint meeting of the Balwyn YMCA Football Club and the Greythorn Football Club on the 23rd November 1975.
The new team played in Melbourne colours and were known as ‘The Alphabets’.
The original teams were:
Balwyn YMCA Football Club, which was formed on or before 1968. This club played at Hislop Park and was based at the YMCA which operated out of what is now known as the Balwyn Leisure Centre.
-
Greythorn Football Club which was formed in 1969 as the Koonung Football Club and first played at Greythorn Park in 1971.
It appears that neither of the clubs were very successful as the Doncaster League was as strong in those days as it is today.
1980 appeared to be a big year for the GBYFC. Firstly there was a name change as the ‘YMCA’ element was replaced by ‘Youth’ due to the closure of the YMCA. Secondly, the club was in a very strong position and was able to field ten teams made up of every age group from under 10 to under 17 together with additional teams in under 11, 13 and 17. Thirdly, the club won it’s first premierships – in under 11s and under 17s.
In 1987 the club transferred to the Hawthorn District Junior Football League and had to change its colours to the uniform we know today as Surrey Park also played in Melbourne colours. Having to provide complete sets of jumpers for the entire club proved to be a financial strain and was particularly annoying as Surrey Park Juniors folded in the following year. Nevertheless the club was able to get some return when we were able to sell our Melbourne jumpers to Surrey Park when they reformed in 1995.
In 1993 the Committee tired of the lengthy club title and recommended to the annual meeting that the name be changed to the Greythorn Football Club. This change was accepted by the members and ‘Greythorn’ teams took to the field in 1994.
Greythorn, were one of the founding members of the new Yarra Junior Football League which was formed in 1997 from the merger of the Hawthorn and Doncaster Leagues. The YJFL is the largest football League in Australia.
In 1998 the club adopted the nickname of ‘The Falcons’ after being unofficially known as ‘The Thorns’ for many years.
The club celebrated it’s 25th anniversary in 2000 but sadly were unable to win any premierships to mark the occasion.
The year 2001 saw the formation of our new Colts team (under 17s) who, played their home matches at Gordon Barnard Reserve. The launch of the Colts team was an immense success, with the Colts being promoted to Section 1 after the first four games.
In 2006, Greythorn finally introduced a 'Tackers' team into the mix and for the first time were able to offer a complete array of teams to local footballers.
On the administration side, the Falcons gained Football Victoria endorsement as a 'Quality Club' - bronze in 2005. This endorsement was upgraded to Silver level in 2006 with hopes to go the final step to Gold in the following years. Very few football clubs in Victoria have been able to gain endorsement and it speaks highly of our performance on the organisational side of our business.
Whilst our club has always fielded competitive teams, we were unable to win any premierships after 1998 until 2006 when we finally broke the drought with the success of our Under 11 team - ably coached by 'Coach of the Year' Neale Peters and our Under 14s under the guidance of Collingwood legend Peter Daicos and John Dinicolantonio.
It seems our club has finally got the knack of winning premierships. The wonderful efforts of our Under 11 and Under 14 teams in 2006 were followed in 2007 by our magnificent U10s who went through the entire season without losing a single game and who then continued on their winning way in 2008 to make it back to back premierships. This team under the guidance of coach Bill Thiel boasts a number of exceptional players and we can look forward to further success as they progress through the ranks in the coming years.
Many thanks to life member Bill Hooker for his research and input for this summary.
