Murtoa's 1980 senior football team will finally celebrate face-to-face 40 years since their 1980 premiership on Saturday, after COVID-19 scuppered plans for the reunion to be held in 2020.
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The 1980 Wimmera Football League grand final saw Murtoa triumph 124-69 against Stawell at Dimboola and was the club's only senior Wimmera Football League premiership, before they merged with Minyip in 1995.
According to Murtoa 1980 premiership playing coach Hugh Delahunty all bar two of the players involve will be attending.
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Delahunty also said around half a dozen Stawell players would be making the trip.
"It'll be a good chance to have a drink and a chinwag with them," he said.
"Even though we were very competitive and fought hard to win on the day, one thing good about sport is it brings communities together, whatever sport you play. so this is a good chance for us to get together over at Murtoa."
The historic premiership will always occupy a special place in the hearts of the Murtoa faithful according to Delahunty.
"In 79 we probably went in a little bit favourites," he said.
"Murtoa had only played in four grand finals before it amalgamated and didn't win the first three, but to win the fourth one was pretty special for the community over at Murtoa.
"Particularly some of the Murtoa people - there was three Delahunty boys were in there, a Rabl, a couple of Tuckers. There was a good spread of local people there.
"Those families really, really appreciated the opportunity to win a premiership and now the kids and grandkids will be celebrating a reunion."
40 years on and Delahunty still has vivid memories of the drought-breaking triumph which he described as an "enormous team effort".
"We started off fairly well," he said.
"My memory was we kicked four or so goals to them, but by half time we were only 11 points the difference. So it was still a fairly close margin.
"We ran away in the third quarter and they came back a bit in the last quarter."
Delahunty said the match was a battle between two dominant forward lines.
The Murtoa team had a potent forward line consisting of prolific goalkickers Simon Caldwell and Michael Delahunty (Hugh's Brother), while Stawell's front-half featured Brent Thompson who kicked his 100th goal for the season in the decider.
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"Unfortunately both sides kicked poorly so it could have gone either way," Delahunty said.
Delahunty believes it was Murtoa's three grand final defeats that ultimately drove them to premiership victory on that fateful day.
"I think that the hurt that we had from the year before really kept us on tune and motivated to make sure we were going to win this one," he said.
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