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A suspicious fire has gutted the clubhouse of one of Victoria’s oldest and most successful country football teams, taking with it more than 100 years of irreplaceable memorabilia.
The double-storey Fish Creek Football Netball Club was a smouldering shell on Saturday morning as devastated locals surveyed the damage.
A blaze at the Fish Creek Football Club on Saturday morning.Credit: Facebook
Club co-president Ray Stefani was working on his dairy farm when a member sent him a photo of the blaze at 5am.
Volunteer crews took an hour to bring the fire under control. The cause of the blaze is not yet known but the arson squad is investigating.
The second level of the building, which served as the beating heart of the small town’s social life, was gutted in the blaze, along with a 100-year-old frame filled with photos of some of the club’s original players.
Honour boards are gone, trophies as well. The team’s 37 premiership flags were luckily in sealed containers within a concreted office downstairs. Stefani is confident they’ll be safe.
Firefighters at the blaze on Saturday morning.Credit: Facebook
“Everything else is gone,” he said. “It’s just devastating for everyone. The football netball club here is the heartbeat of the town.”
Word of the fire spread quickly on Saturday morning. Stefani said he had already received offers of help from players and neighbouring Gippsland clubs.
He said players, who were in preseason training for next year, would not let the fire affect the coming season.
“I know our playing group, they’ll be resolute no doubt,” he said. “It’s just going to spur them on even more.”
The gutted building on Saturday morning.Credit: Facebook
Stefani said the club was fuelled by the passion of its volunteers and the history of the club.
“Fishy” won their 37th premiership in September, a record for country football.
Stefani said the side didn’t start the season well but “in true Fish Creek spirit, everyone just dug in and thought this is going to be a bit of hard work and … ended up winning the whole thing as underdogs”.
“It was very uplifting. We’re going to need that passion because we’ve got a bit of a road ahead of us now,” Stefani said.
The club’s future looked uncertain in 2016 amid predictions it may last only another three or four years. It has since made a comeback, with an influx of people from Melbourne boosting both player and volunteer numbers.
It was the same spirit that pulled the club through the COVID years, when on one weekend, many of its players were trapped in one of Melbourne’s lockdowns.
As other clubs forfeited matches, coaches were spurred on by photos of former players and club legends that lined the stairway to their clubhouse — players who, Stefani said, would give them a “fair clip behind the ear” if they gave up.
Eighteen footballers down, the club began calling former players to field both reserves and seniors for that weekend’s matches.
They were flogged in reserves (“We had 50-year-olds playing”) but the senior team won, kicking the last goal of the game.
“It was amazing. The president was in shock. It was purely on spirit and that’s the base of this club.”
Stefani, whose grandfather played for Fish Creek in the 1930s and ’40s, grew up in the town, hearing stories of premierships, comebacks and triumph.
“The thing that churns my stomach is the things that have been lost that will never be retrieved.
So much history and it was all upstairs.”
A Victoria Police spokesperson said a crime scene had been established and an arson chemist would attend the scene on Saturday.
Anyone who witnessed the incident or has information can contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or submit a confidential report www.crimestoppersvic.com.au
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