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Plugger Atkin's Premiership


Note: some of this has post been adapted from my thesis, 'Two Brothers from Timberland: the Atkin Family in Australia', but I have taken the opportunity to describe the grand final match in much more detail.

Long before Tony Lockett made the nickname famous in AFL circles, the Atkin family had their very own 'Plugger'. While Mum's father Gloucester Atkin was generally known around Yarragon as 'Glos', on the football field he was 'Plugger', and by all accounts he was one of the Yarragon club's better players during the 1920s. He had of course grown up with a love of footy: in 1907, as a 12 year old he can be seen sitting at the feet of the front row of the footballers in the Yarragon Football Club team photograph, his father William the proud club president at the back holding a flag.

By the time of his own playing career, he had a short and stocky build, which he used to his advantage as a 'nuggety' rover-type player. He was frequently named among the team’s best players, and in 1921 featured in a poem written to celebrate a particularly fine victory against Iona, in which they held their opponents scoreless until the final quarter (the final scores being 2.18 30 to 2.0 12):

‘Plugger’ Atkin is some dodger
I reckon he’s a snodger
The team can play the game
Be it wet or fine just the same 
(Excerpt from 'Ode to Ionee' by 'Jerry', Yarragon, Trafalgar & Moe Setlement News, 21/7/21; a ‘snodger’ is an old-fashioned term meaning ‘someone or something that is first-class’)

Thanks to Bernie Green's fine history of the Yarragon Football Club, 'For the Love of the Game' (1996), we know that Atkin's playing career at the club in the top level spanned at least the years 1919 through to 1926. He was vice-captain and possibly captain of the team in the mid-1920s, and while over its history the club has not been overly successful, the era in which Glos played was probably its halcyon period: Yarragon played in the finals of the Central Gippsland Football Association in all but two of the years he played. After a semi-final loss in 1919 and then missing out on finals only by percentage in 1920, the club put together a very good season to return to the finals in 1921.

After accounting for Moe comfortably in the semi-final by 35 points, Yarragon had to withstand a protest from their opponents who claimed Yarragon had played ineligible players. This appears to have been quite a common practice at the time, but in this case the protest was dismissed. Thus Yarragon were set to meet Warragul in the final on September 24, which was played at the Trafalgar ground in front of a record attendance. The match got under way and Warragul had the best of the early going, registering the first two goals, the 'Magpies' getting one back with a kick off the ground and starting to get more into the game. Facing a quarter time deficit of nine points, Yarragon scored a goal and several behinds to take the lead before Warragul goaled to take it back. This they held until half time, when just after the bell rang, Yarragon scored another goal kicked off the ground, which was allowed to stand as the central umpire said he had not heard the bell - though he went on to say that if the goal was to affect the result it could be disputed!

Five points up at the main interval, Yarragon scored the opening behinds and goal of the third quarter, but two goals in a row to Warragul had them back within a point, the scores being 4.12 36 to 5.5 35. Just before three-quarter time a place-kicked goal gave Yarragon the small buffer of seven points heading into the final quarter. Warragul threw everything at the Magpies in the early stages of the last quarter but Yarragon defended stoutly, and for a period no-one could break through. Eventually a drop-kicked goal was scored by the Magpies to end the resistance, and they added two more to run out winners by 25 points. The quarter-by-quarter scores were as follows:

Yarragon    1.2   3.10   5.12   8.13 (51)
Warragul    2.5   3.5   5.5   5.6 (36)

The West Gippsland Gazette reported that Yarragon put in some 'fine hand-ball work, and frequently had the best of the deal in the air.' They also appeared to be the 'better-trained team' and 'stayed the distance well'. The game however was 'robbed... of some interest' by the 'absence of systematic work.' It was played in generally good spirits, though a couple of players 'lost their heads for a moment or two.' In a more amusing moment during the game, at one point a cow leisurely wandered onto the oval.

Glos Atkin was named as one of the best players on the day, and no doubt it would have been a huge thrill for him to be such an integral part of Yarragon’s second premiership team. The club would go on to make the final the following year, but the tables were turned, losing to Warragul by 22 points. They reached the semi-final twice in the next three years, but in 1927, the year after Glos finished playing, they would fall to the bottom of the ladder. Glos also filled leadership roles off the field – having been club secretary while playing in 1924, he served as president of the club in 1926-27, and was again secretary in 1931. And as the town butcher, for many years Glos’ business would supply the meat for sandwiches served at the ground, which his daughters would prepare. In those days, shops would shut Saturday midday and the whole town went to the footy so there were always many hungry mouths to cater for!



'Plugger' Atkin front row (seated), third from left, in the Premiership photo from 1921



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