East Perth Football Club - History

History

The club was actually founded in 1902 as Union Football Club (not to be confused with the defunct Unions club from Fremantle) and competed in the Perth 3rd Rate Association Competition (however an earlier 'East Perth' had formed in 1891). The club was successful and was promoted to the 1st Rate Association. After continuing to succeed at this level they applied to join the WAFL and hence became a member in April 1906. The club became known as East Perth in accordance with the WAFL's policy of having each club represent a district in Perth.

After a relatively slow start - despite being competitive form its first season - East Perth after World War I went on to become one of the most powerful clubs in the West Australian league with the appointment of former Subiaco player Phil Matson as captain-coach. The club won five consecutive WAFL premierships between 1919 and 1923, and after a brief lapse due to Matson’s death in car crash recovered to contest the finals every year from 1931 to 1940, but won only one premiership - a frustrating record to be repeated in the 1970s.

Although the club garnered an undefeated premiership in the under-age WAFL competition in 1944, it was very much a middle-of-the-road side until the emergence of champion ruckman Graham "Polly" Farmer in 1956. That year, despite being held to the lowest WAFL score between 1946 and 2002 by Perth in torrential rain and genuine darkness at the WACA, the Royals won fourteen of their nineteen games and beat South Fremantle twice. Under the coaching of Jack Sheedy, and aided by becoming the first WAFL club to play players formally, the club contested the following five grand finals for further premierships in 1958 and 1959 and a huge upset loss to Swan Districts in 1961.

The loss of Farmer, however, saw a decline in fortunes: in 1964 the club won only one of its first eighteen games and finished with its first wooden spoon since 1929, but with the recruitment of Kevin Murray the club returned to the top quickly. It returned to the finals in 1966 and played therein during every one of the next seventeen seasons except 1974. During these years East Perth won 246 and drew one of 388 games for a success rate of 63.5 percent: clearly the highest in a competition that - at least during the first half of the period - was extremely even and characterised by very rapid fluctuations in teams’ fortunes. By 1980, the club had made a submission to enter the VFL/AFL, however this was withdrawn, and from 1983 their fortunes declined abruptly: between 1985 and 1995 East Perth won only eighty and draw one of 235 games for a success rate of 34.26%.

In 1996 the Royals returned to prominence and took the minor premiership before losing narrowly to Claremont in its first grand final since 1978. However, the club returned to the lower reaches of the ladder in 1999, winning only five of twenty games. East Perth later acted as the host club for West Coast Eagles players recruited from interstate from 2000–2001 until the host club arrangement was abolished. This made them favoured for high honours in 2000 - which was achieved, though the Royals’ “old guard” made a much larger contribution than expected to the club’s first flag for twenty-two years. It repeated the dose emphatically in 2001, holding South Fremantle to 0.3 (3) after half time, and yet again in 2002, but fell off steadily in the following four seasons to win only six games in 2005. A partial recovery in 2007 saw the Royals finish fourth, but it returned to last in 2008 before again rebounding in 2009 to finish fifth.

Its first home ground was Wellington Square. It then moved to Perth Oval between 1910 and 2002, although it played games at the WACA from 1988–89. East Perth began playing its games at Medibank Private Stadium from 2000 (better known in Perth as Leederville Oval, formerly the home of bitter rivals West Perth), but the club only officially moved there in 2003. They have since been joined at the ground by the Subiaco Football Club.