By Charlene Gatt
MORE than 60 Sunshine Heights Football Club past players flocked to Ainsworth Reserve on Saturday for a triple premiership reunion spanning three decades.
Players from the Dragons’ 1979, 1988 and 1998 premierships made use of a specially erected marquee to watch their seniors team storm to an 84point victory over top-four team Deer Park.
Hard-core members arrived at the ground at 11.45am to cheer on veteran Alan “Percy” Parker in his 451st game.
Parker, 44, has donned the red, white and blue since the early 1980s and played in the 1988 premiership. He now plays for the reserves side.
Dragons president Vince Sposato addressed the crowd during a half-time barbecue while former premiership players took to the microphone later in the day.
Post-game dinner and drinks continued the celebrations. Assistant coach Michael Grima was flushed with the success of the day and noted that some things in footy never changed.
“I was speaking to someone the other day and I said to him, ‘you probably won’t know many of the guys that are playing today, but they’re basically the same guys with different names – you have the same jokers in every group that goes through, you have the same serious hard trainers, and it just sort of runs through in a cycle’.
“We’re certainly not a rich club, we don’t pay any of our players, and we’ve got a good sort of close-knit family atmosphere down there and when we get guys to come to the club they seem to stay there for a long time.”
Grima has been a part of the club since playing under-9s in 1984. He officially hung up his playing boots this year after pulling a hamstring at a practice match.
He said Sunshine Heights was well placed to take the flag for the third decade running, but did not want to jinx their good start to the season with cockiness. The Dragons top the Western Region Football League division two ladder after round eight. “It’s been discussed how we’ve won one in ’88, we’ve won one in ’98, and exactly 10 years down the track we’re sitting on top,” he said.
“We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves, but it might be a bit of an omen in the club.”
