2003 Senior Boys Football

Our only team to ever win both the State Title and the Herald Sun Country Shield in the one year, this may be our greatest Football team ever.

They took the Shield by 50 points against Warnambool’s Brauer College at Port Melbourne in July, to become our 4th Shield Champions in history (alongside 1999, 1987, 1985).

Then in the VSSSA State Final, Year 10 Matt Graham kicked the match-winning goal against a Box Hill High School led by future Hawthorn 4-time Premiership player Jordan Lewis, to win that Title by 3 points at Oakleigh. Graham’s goal, a snap from the pocket (which was his 2nd of the final quarter) must sit alongside the match winner of Chris Thewlis in the 2005 Year 7 Final, as one of our greatest moments in School Football history.

Year 11 Michael “Juice” Newton was the only future AFL player. He would debut for Melbourne and take AFL Mark Of The Year 4 years later. He would later kick 57 goals in a SANFL Premiership, return home to play in 2 Premierships at Wangaratt Magpies (including an 8 goal BOG Grand Final in 2017).

Newton that year in 2003 was playing Seniors for Whorouly, where he was reported to be jumping on people’s heads as a 15 year old. The same year he played Under 16 Vic Country. In the School team, he was that good that he was played Full Forward when we had the wind, and key back when against it, to keep him in the play at all times.

Aside from Juice, the team was stacked with talent.

There were 3 boys that played in a junior Victorian Country team. Newton and Matt Graham (Captain) were both in the Under 16 team of that year (2003), while Michael Davidson would make the 2004 U18 team the following year. Riley Minns had made the 2001 U16 squad 2 years prior.

Newton, Davidson and Graham would both be key Under 18 Murray Bushrangers the following year, with Davidson the Captain, Graham Vice Captain, and Newton drafted by Melbourne at Pick 43 in November 2004.

Graham, who in 2003 was a regular U18 Bushranger as a Year 10 (extremely rare), sadly did his ACL halfway though the 2004 season, and then missed his “draft year” of 2005. Teammates recall him being an explosive, fast, long-kicking player with the freakish ability to kick snap and check-side goals from outside the 50m arc. Captain of Vic Country U16, then Vice Captain of the Bushrangers as a bottom-ager. Much like Scott Thompson in 1997, many say it’s a fair call to claim Graham could have been on track to be drafted, if not for the knee injury.

Minns had also played a game for the Bushrangers the year before in 2002, and Ray Usher was in a Bushrangers squad too.

Incredibly though, the team won their 1st Title of the year, the Herald Country Shield, without all of Newton, Davidson and Graham. Newton and Graham were in Adelaide playing in the U16 National Carnival for Vic Country, and Davidson was injured with a Broken Collarbone (listed on the Official Team Sheet as “Assistant Coach”).

They then won the VSSSA State Final, without requiring Davidson, Minns or Usher.

Newton and Graham did play the VSSA Final, and were key cogs. Year 10 Graham (only eligible due to having missed the Intermediate carnival due to Vic Country commitments) kicked the goal to put them up in the final quarter, then also the winning goal with 2 minutes on the clock, and was the Top Goalkicker with 3.

Newton was so good that he was played Full Forward when we had the wind, and key back when against it, to keep him in the play at all times.

A cunning piece of coaching by Coach Paul O’Brien, who at the time playing for Corowa in the O&M, had played 3 seasons for the Murray Bushrangers and who was dominant for Galen in school football. Assistant John Evans, coaching his 4th State Title, may have been behind the move too.

It must have been a deeply talented team to win the Herald without those 3, and the VSSSA Final without the following year’s Bushrangers Captain and two other Bushrangers listed talls.

At the top of the remaining talent, there was C0-Captain Jamie Allan – rover and widely regarded the team’s best player alongside Co-Captain John Conroy. Allan had won the Ovens & Murray 3rd Leo Dean Medal (League B&F) the year before as a Year 11, but was playing Seniors for the Wangaratta Rovers in 2003. He ended up renowned as one of the most skilled and brilliant midfielders the Ovens & Murray saw in the following decade. Allan spent some time at Box Hill in the VFL, and was shown interest by Hawthorn, and when returning home would win a Morris Medal in the O&M in 2011, and finish Runner-Up in 2009, as well as a Baker Medal in the Ovens & King in 2019 at the age of 34, to go with multiple Senior Club B&Fs in the O&M. Most say he sits alongside the likes of Brad “Gooch” Miller and Jon “Hopper “McCormick among the classiest footballers to ever pull on our jumper.