Lake Boga Football Club History
Magpies: a proud tradition

GRAHAM GARDNER, Swan Hill Guardian, Wednesday, November 19, 2003

LAKE BOGA was proclaimed a township in 1892, and in the same year a football club was formed.

Three teams then constituted the Swan Hill District Football Association - Swan Hill Faughs, Swan Hill Imperials and Lake Boga. Goschen joined this association two years later.

Lake Boga has played continuously since 1892, winning flags in 1899, 1905, 1906, 1919, 1923, 1927, 1931 (flood year) and 1940. Local football was dis­banded during World War Two.

In 1945 a new Mid Murray Football League was established with the following teams: Swan Hill, Nyah, Nyahwest Rov­ers, RAAF (at Lake Boga), Woorinen, Ultima, Lalbert, Tooleybuc and Lake Boga.

In the grand final that year Nyahwest Rovers beat the RAAF team. A young Bob Rose was among the best for the winners.

Lake Boga has had many champion players over the years including: Jack Baker, "Poddy" Ryan, Arthur "Yank" Codling, Gordon Carmichael, Ben Emerson, Dan Kelly, Brian Keighran, Basil McDonald and Gavin Free.

Kelly, Keighran and McDonald each won the club's best and fairest award five times. In earlier days the local team had a number of Aboriginal players including Wally Stewart, Herman and G. Pepper.

Since 1945 Lake Boga have won six premier­ships - 1951, 1953, 1954, 1967, 1975 and 2003.

The year 1975 was a magnificent year for the Lake Boga Football Club. The Magpies took out both the senior and Under 16 flags and narrowly missed the Reserves premiership, going down to Tyntynder by just four points.

In the 1975 grand final Lake Boga played Swan Hill. With a brilliant final quarter burst of seven goals they crushed the Swan Hill team by 23 points.

The Guardian named the best Boga players as John McFarland (coach), Brian Holcombe, Ron `Slattsey' Gadsden, Greg Codling, Ian McAlister and Rocky Demaria. Tom Speedle of Swan Hill was named best on ground.

And, as history records, the Mighty Magpies took out the 2003 premiership flag, after 28 years in the wilderness. They belted the highly fancied Swan Hill team by 43 points.

Football is a vital part of Lake Boga and although the 2003 victory was sweet, the 1975 senior team took all before it as the Under 16s won and the Reserves missed out by only four points that year. It is recorded in the centenary history of the Lake Boga Football Club that there was very severe flooding in the Lake Boga area in the winter of 1931. In those days Ultima played in the local foot­ball competition and in the 1930 season Ultima went throu gh the season undefeated.

In mid 1931 the Lake Boga team was to play Ultima so the Boga boys hired a bus to get them to Ultima.

The road then was unmade and at every flooded crabhole the bus got bogged, so thehole of the Boga 18 players had to get out, tie a rope to the front bumper bar and physically pull the bus out of the bog.

This happened a number of times and the Boga boys eventually got to Ultima at 4pm.

So they played two ten-minute quarters of football and then began the slow haul homewards, encountering the same flood conditions as on the trip down.