‘Kicking Against the Wind’: A history of the Demons

OVER four years of work and research has culminated into a 190-page document encapsulating the history of the Portarlington Football Club on the eve of its 150th year celebration.

From the club’s formation in 1874 to the role it played during both World Wars, and then its eventual move into the Bellarine & District Football League in 1971, ‘Kicking Against the Wind’ goes into thousands of artefacts and lists hundreds of family names, dotting together how the Demons has formed into the club it is today.

Author and journalist Rick Wilkinson and Portarlington Football Club historian Peter Ashton launched their long-awaited book on Wednesday for the official book launch at Portarlington Golf Club.

It commenced a massive week of celebrations for the club, which will officially celebrate 150 years of history this Saturday when its hosts its final home and away fixture of the season against Queenscliff.

Speaking with the Bellarine Times, Mr Wilkinson, a 27-year local of Portarlington, said he has grown a much closer relationship with the club through the authoring of the book.

“When I first heard it was a book about 150 years of history, I thought holey moley that’s a long time, and we had an end date on it as well and it was just an absolute privilege to be able to undertake a task like this.

“Once we completed it, it was a huge feeling of relief, especially looking back on the work we had done, Pete had actually told me a lot of the records of the club had been lost to a fire.

“This meant we had to do extensive research to put a lot of the pieces together from scratch, but we’re really proud of what we’ve done here, and we hope as much of the community can enjoy it as much as we have.”

Mr Ashton grew up with Portarlington since he was a boy, but one player stuck out to him the most out of them all.

Jack Manson sits on the Mount Rushmore of Portarlington’s best; a three-time league best and fairest from 1931-1933 and served as captain-coach during Portarlington’s 1947 premiership year.

“He was certainly one person that springs to mind for me, just such an important figure during those years at the Demons,” Mr Ashton said.

“He also coached some of the juniors at the time, and for him to do what he did at that time, was almost unheard of, doing research on him was definitely up there with one of my favourite parts of this book.”

Manson was also named the Portarlington Football Club’s captain of its Sesquicentennial Team, which is (playing) coached by 1980-82 Demons captain-coach George Bisset.

The book, made up of 520 copies in the first release, is available for purchase at the Portarlington Post Office for $60 with all proceeds to be diverted back into the club to offset costs for producing the book.

Mr Ashton and Mr Wilkinson thanked the club’s History Committee and researcher Liam Detering, Deakin professor Tony Joel, and sports historian John Hay for their efforts and support.