The Port Melbourne Football Club, nicknamed the Borough, is an Australian rules football club based in the inner-Melbourne suburb of Port Melbourne. The club was founded in 1874 and has been competing in the Victorian Football Association/League (VFL) since 1886 and the VFLW since 2021.
The 'Borough' is one of the true pioneers of Australian Rules Football and pre-dates two-thirds of the current AFL clubs in the competition today. For most of its 150 year history the club have played at the same historic North Port Oval, wearing the same vertical red and blue stripes in front of their legendary passionate and colourful supporters.
Port Melbourne is the most successful club in the VFA/VFL/VFLW, having won 18 senior premierships - 17 senior first division men's premierships - three more than its nearest rival Williamstown, and the club secured its inaugural VFLW premiership and 18th overall in 2023. Beyond these premierships, the club has been a men's first division grand finalist or Runners Up on a further 21 occasions bringing their total grand final appearances or finishes in the final two to a remarkable 38 in their 138 years in the competition (early in the competition their were no grand finals and 'Runners Up' was awarded to the team that finished second on the ladder, much like soccer).
Port Melbourne is also the only VFA/VFL Club never to have been relegated to the second division when the VFA had both first and second divisions. The club has maintained a fiercely independent and stand-alone status, without being in a formal reserves affiliation with a club from the Australian Football League (AFL) for all but five years of its history.
Consequently, Port Melbourne is considered one of the strongest Victorian-based football clubs that does not compete in the AFL. The club has had a women's team in the VFL Women's (VFLW) competition since 2021, and in the past it has fielded premiership-winning teams in the now-defunct VFL reserves competition. In 2024, the club fielded its first team in the Victorian Blind Football League (VBFL).
The Port Melbourne Football Club joined the senior ranks Victorian Football Association (VFA) in 1886, its inaugural team formed in large part from members of the powerful nearby South Melbourne Football Club which had dominated metropolitan football in 1885.[1] The club has played in every VFA/VFL season since that time. In 1897, Port Melbourne was left out of the group of eight clubs which formed the breakaway VFL competition, despite having regularly been about the sixth- or seventh- best performing team onfield. Historian Terry Keenan theorised that the likeliest reason for Port Melbourne's exclusion was the reputation for the poor behaviour that its players and spectators had developed over the previous decade; its rivalry with and proximity to South Melbourne and the fact that Port Melbourne had supported the gate equalisation measures which the breakaway clubs were trying to escape were also speculated to have contributed to the decision.[2]
The club, and the suburb of Port Melbourne in general, were heavily associated with wharf labourers and the union movement. During a 1928 waterfront strike in Melbourne, a wharf labourer protesting the use of scab labour was shot by police; as a result, the club banned any police from playing with them. The policy remained in place until the late 1950s.[3]
Port Melbourne went on to become one of the strongest clubs in the VFA, and today still attracts some of the biggest crowds to its games. The club had very strong links with the Port Melbourne community, arguably the strongest community relationship within the VFA; local juniors often held stronger aspirations to play for Port Melbourne than for the VFL's South Melbourne – which by the 1950s was perennially struggling and to which the Port Melbourne area was zoned – and even players as highly decorated as Brownlow Medallists Peter Bedford and Bob Skilton returned to play with Port Melbourne after their VFL careers.[4] Over the twenty-eight seasons from 1961 until 1988 that the VFA was partitioned into two divisions, Port Melbourne played every season in the first division – a distinction shared only with the Sandringham.
Traditionally, Port Melbourne's greatest rivals are the Williamstown Seagulls and the Sandringham Zebras. All three teams continue to play in the VFL to this day. Prior to the original breakaway of the VFL from the VFA in 1897, Port Melbourne's greatest rival was South Melbourne.[2]
Since the AFL reserves competition merged with the Victorian Football League in 2000, Port Melbourne has been involved in two affiliations: with the Sydney Swans (2001–2002), and with the Kangaroos (2003–2005); since 2006, Port Melbourne has existed as a stand-alone VFL club. The club has fielded a team in the VFL Women's competition since 2021.
In under-age football, Port Melbourne has been affiliated with the Oakleigh Chargers NAB League team since the 1999 season,[5] and the Chargers adopted Port Melbourne's colours as part of the affiliation. Port Melbourne had previously been affiliated with the Geelong Falcons (1996–1998),[6] and in 1995 was part of a three-way affiliation which saw it share the Calder Cannons and Western Jets with Williamstown and Coburg.[7]
In 2024, Port Melbourne joined the Victorian Blind Football League (VBFL), becoming the first VFL club to do so.[8]
The club's onfield nickname is the Borough or Boroughs. Like many clubs, its earliest nickname was geographical, and the Borough nickname came from the club's location in what was once the Borough of Port Melbourne; the name stuck, even after the area was upgraded to the status of town in 1893, and eventually city in 1919.[9][10] Unlike most other clubs, Port Melbourne never adopted a more modern nickname based on an animal or profession, and remains known as the Borough. The name was sometimes written as Burra or Burras,[11] and in the 1970s and 1980s the nickname was sometimes depicted with a kookaburra.[12]
The Port Melbourne Football Club's guernsey is royal blue with red vertical stripes.
The official Port Melbourne Football Club song is called "It's a Grand Old Flag" (sung to the tune of George M. Cohan's 1906 song "You're a Grand Old Flag").
It's a grand old flag, it’s a high-flying flag,
It’s the emblem for me and for you;
It’s the emblem of the team we love,
The team of the Red and the Blue.
Every heart beats true for the Red and the Blue,
And we sing this song to you:
Should old acquaintance be forgot,
Keep your eye on the Red and the Blue.
In 2011, Port Melbourne completed a perfect season, winning all eighteen home-and-away games, then three finals matches, culminating in a 56-point win against Williamstown in the Grand Final.[13] It was the first perfect season in the VFA/VFL first division since 1918.[14]
The Port Melbourne team of the century was selected in August 2003:
Port Melbourne have fielded a VFL Women's team since 2021, in affiliation with the Richmond Football Club. They have won one premiership as of 2024.
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