Words and photos by Chris Rees

Return to Campbell Town

I popped in for a look at the Campbell Town footy ground, five years on from the last set of photos. Two days prior the Robins had hosted Swansea, went down fighting, and that (inaccurate) score remained on the board. Campbell Town have been in the Oatlands District Football League since 2009. They are currently propping up the ladder, on -4 points with a percentage of 6. That loss to Swansea was actually their best effort of the season by far. They followed up the next week with a 269 – 0 loss at Campania.

But back home, changes are afoot. The famously fragile brick grandstand has gone, and a new low-rise function centre/changerooms complex is taking shape, fabricated in club colours of red and black.

The scoreboard has a fresh coat of white paint but has lost its label as the “CTFC Old Players and Supporters Scoreboard”.

 

Some steel footings have been set into the mouldering lichen-covered bike track just beside the scoreboard. My gut feeling is that a new electronic model is coming, to be operated from the new clubrooms by remote.

On a good note this time the old scoreboard was unlocked and time allowed a good look around. The bold painted numbers have been augmented with some relatively ugly spray-painted fill-ins.

The name boards were few but interesting. FDFA was the Fingal District Football Association, which folded in 1992 – presumably that board was used for representative games. After ’92 Campbell Town joined the 2nd division of the NTFA, where they competed against St Pats, an old scholars team from Launceston. That board would have been last used in 2008.

While he never played a senior game for the Robins, Brent Crosswell is probably the most famous footy product of the town.

Campbell Town footy history via australianfootball.com

Chris Rees is a Hobart graphic designer and Richmond supporter. Scoreboard Pressure highly recommends his 1970s  footy enigmas T-shirts. (Especially the Geoff Blethyn top.)