‘Like a pub with no beer’: Rushworth Football Netball club can’t field a men’s senior football team for the first time in history

Bartlett would know.

Not only is he the publican at the Criterion Hotel in the main street, he’s also the president of Rushworth Football Netball club.

Next Saturday when the siren rings out around 2.10pm through the Kyabram and District Football Netball League to start the senior season, Rushworth won’t be there.

It will be the first time Rushworth hasn‘t fielded a senior team since the club was formed in 1882.

This week they’ve had to pull out their under 18 team too.

“Technically that means we could be kicked out of the league,” Bartlett says.

The reserve grade team will play, though they’ll be relying on ring-ins who work in the mines to fill some gaps.

Bartlett is putting on a brave face. He yells over to his bar staff, “Wayne, you’ll play full back won’t you?” Wayne looks to be well into his 50s.

Rushworth is a typical small country town. For its population of around 2000 people, the footy club has always been the social hub.

But now it feels like the club is fading away.

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Bartlett is a relative newcomer to town. He came here for the quiet life but soon enough he’d bought the pub and last year was co-opted to head up the footy club as it battled for survival.

“I swore I’d never get involved with a footy club again,” he tells CODE Sports with a wry smile.

He puts his hand to his forehead and the smile turns to a frown.

“It‘s heartbreaking. The older generation is devastated. That’s what they did on a Saturday; go and watch the footy.”

Peter Raglus is one of those people. He has been involved at Rushworth for more than 50 years, starting as a player in the under 16s and is also a legend of the cricket club.

“It would be terrible, it‘s a real community connection for the town,” he tells CODE Sports.

Bartlett says those running the club almost feel defeated.

“People here are absolutely exhausted, because you don‘t do one job, you do five or six. “

Even the idiosyncratic charms of ‘Rushy’, where opposition players refer to the ground as Roo Poo Park, now grate.

“The ground is covered in kangaroo shit,” Bartlett says.

“Before every training session you have to go out there and clear the whole ground.”

There’s not even funding for a cyclone wire fence to keep the roos off.

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So how did it get to this?

At the pub and around town everyone has a slightly different opinion.

“You used to see kids in the street a lot, you don‘t see them now,” says Raglus.

“I don‘t know whether they sit at home on phones and iPads now … they’re not as interested in sport these days.”

Bartlett says the game itself appears healthy, because the AFL is still followed by everyone in town. But it‘s via their television and phone, not out on the field.

“There is nothing being done to attract kids to actually play footy here. The wrong support has been coming out from the AFL.”

They also have a strange demographic peculiarity that makes it even more difficult.

“We don’t have boys in the area. There’s been a 100 per cent decline in boys at the school, and a 100 per cent increase in girls. ”

Age demographics are working against them too.

Jedd Perry is one of four brothers who donned the yellow and black in nearly 300 games across juniors and seniors. His experience after finishing school is symbolic of the population shift.

“There‘s no industry as such in the town and uni options are limited. I had to go to Melbourne,” Perry says.

He and others spent a decade travelling back each Saturday to play for their hometown, but he acknowledges that modern family and work commitments means ‘travelling back’ is likely a thing of the past too.

“We’ve been paddling upstream for a while,” he says.

The few that stay in Rushworth with dedication to football, invariably end up being attracted to a bigger town, a better standard and added dollars.

“Any of our boys who show an ounce of talent are picked up by Kyabram or Colbinabbin,” Bartlett says.

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Netball is the silver lining in Rushworth.

The club will field seven netball teams across its junior and senior divisions as compared to just reserves and under 14s in footy.

“Ninety per cent of the people on the committee are females, they’re looking after netball and doing an awesome job,” Bartlett says.

“If we need something done, the girls are there. If our guys were like that we’d have a great club. We just don’t have enough males around the club.”

The energy of the female part of the club just highlights the malaise around young males in small country towns.

With work opportunities limited like many places in regional Australia, it‘s whispered around town the drug scourge of ice is another reason why the football club is faltering.

“Any small town without a football or a netball team, what else is there for young people to do?” asks Bartlett.

“We have parents come saying there’s nothing for the kids to do in Rushworth and that‘s why they’re getting into trouble. Get your kids down to the footy club, it gives them something.

“It is bigger than just going and playing a game on Saturday.”

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A way forward for footy in Rushworth is hard to see right now, and the plight is no different to a plethora of community clubs across Australia.

In recent years they’ve spent money paying players from across Australia, they’ve forged partnerships with the justice system to play incarcerated youngsters on day release and they‘ve cut all players’ fees and offered to pay for boots.

“We’ve tried everything,” Bartlett says.

Now they‘re paying all their reserves players $100 a game.

Nearby Stanhope have been Rushworth’s arch rivals for a century. Nobody can consider a merger with them either logistically or emotionally.

For Rushworth the future is female, but even then there are handicaps, as Bartlett explains.

“I said to the girls, we’ll just run netball and maybe start up a women’s footy team … but they won’t give us that option.”

League rules stipulate without football teams you can’t play in the netball league as, understandably, trying to fixture a season would be virtually impossible.

At the moment Rushworth doesn‘t have the facilities for women’s footy, but if the men aren’t playing, the girls might take their place in the future.

If you head down to Ironbark Stadium, a chilling reminder sits next to the footy ground.

The once immaculate grass tennis courts of Rushworth are a wildly overgrown wasteland. They have been out of operation for years.

“That‘s what’s going to happen to the footy club.” says Bartlett, though vowing to fight on.

“I fear this will be our last year.”

If you feel like a kick of the footy in central Victoria consider joining Rushworth Football Club.