Kermandie Football Club, Tasmania

Photos and words by Matt Cramond

Kermandie Football Club’s seniors and reserves shut up shop in 2010, after 127 years.  A mighty effort to last that long. Its ground and its distinctive scoreboard are still  in use.

The clubrooms and  scoreboard, featuring large wooden wheels that turn the numbers are around, were built by players and volunteers of the Robins, and opened on 3 April 1954.

It’s  likely the wooden wheels (which look a little medieval) would have been cut from local timber. Plenty of it down here.

There used to be three of these types of scoreboards, all at Huon Football Association grounds.

As well as Kemandie, there was a scoreboard up in the loft at Franklin Football Club’s ground in Franklin just down the road from Huonville. (Franklin merged with Huonville in late 1997 and are still playing today as the Huonville Lions out of Huonville Oval in the Southern Football League today.)

The Franklin ground last hosted a football match several years ago and the pavilion was demolished due to safety reasons in the 2000s.

Channel, I believe, also had a scoreboard similar to Kermandie but it burnt down in about 1990.

The Kermandie oval is used by some junior teams in the Southern Football League, including Kermandie. Cygnet combined their Under 18 team with the Kermandie Under 18s to play as the Southern Storm in the SFL this year.

Cygnet still have their own stand alone reserves and seniors and host  a Community Footy day at Kermandie usually once a season, to pay homage to the old rivalries with Kermandie.

Geeveston is the main town in the Kermandie region. Beautiful part of the world, about 65 kms south of Hobart.

Kermandie Football Club history

More photos of KFC (including David Bridie’s three chickens.)

Editors’ note: there are more than 400 scoreboards on this website and this one is up with the best of them, especially its combination of local history, ingenuity, and longevity.

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