Goulburn Swans historian and life member Bob Stephens with the club’s emblem, carved from a tree stump by his grandson James Doyle. He plans to put all the names of life members onto the polished ornament. Photo: John Thistleton.
Inside a little corrugated iron shed in North Goulburn on a bleak winter’s day Bob Stephens’ face is aglow with pride.
The shed’s window allows enough light to spread over the facing wall draped in photographs, a 1990 Hawks jumper once worn by the Monaro region’s Australian rules legend and a polished tree stump shaped like a swan.
In this backyard shrine to the Goulburn Hawks/Swans Football Club, which Bob has taken decades to assemble, he’s recounting the club’s legends ahead of ‘Old Boys Day’ on Saturday (21 June).
The club’s historian is with long-serving former president and fellow life member Gavin Halder who has organised more than 20 past players from all over Australia to attend the day.
Australian rules has been played in Goulburn since 1930. It resumed as the Hawks Football Club in 1965, folded in 1998 and was resurrected in 2004 as the Swans Football Club.
Rugby league teams down through the decades dominated Goulburn’s football ovals. Getting an AFL side on the field previously required the club’s president knocking on potential players’ doors on game day pleading for them to play.
Homegrown players were rare. Instead, bank tellers, stock and station agents who had come from the Riverina and miners from the former Woodlawn Mine near Tarago were enlisted.
Gavin came from New Zealand in 1983 and Bob came from Melbourne in 1986.
Yet the Hawks and Swans have won grand finals against better resourced teams from the Australian National University and big Australian Defence bases in Canberra.
“It was always a struggle, a year-to-year proposition for a long time,” Bob says.
“We won the premiership in 1990 and in ’91 we were struggling for players; we didn’t think we were going to get a team together,” he says. “Only for George Samios bringing five or six Canberra boys with him, we would not have played. And we won the (1991) premiership.”
The Hawks premiership team from 1990. Bob Stephens is on the right, third row, Gavin Halder is second from the right end on the second row. Steve Armstrong is in the front row holding a trophy and Wendell Rosewarne is on the left, with his dog Monty. Photo: Goulburn Hawks/Swans.
Gavin recounts chasing up brothers James and Paul Hopper to play in 1990. (James’ son Jacob became a professional player, first turning out for Greater Western Sydney Giants and these days for the Richmond Tigers.)
Gavin says Defence teams in Canberra were able to fly players back to the national capital for grand finals against Goulburn teams. “It was always a battle with the ANU or Royal Military College, they had blokes coming in from everywhere,” he says.
Now it’s former Goulburn players returning from everywhere for Old Boys Day. Among numerous former players will be the Hawks’ Steve Keys now living in Melbourne, George Samios (Melbourne), Peter George (Hobart), Trevor Bourke (Darwin and later Brisbane), Ken Pearson (Terrigal), Matt Homberg (Port Macquarie) and Graham Burgess (Gunnedah).
The club has no shortage of legends among its ranks. Coaching and playing for the Swans, Heath Russell led them to a premiership in 2009 when he kicked a record eight goals, and again in 2015. David Landini who played for Geelong, only played half a season for the Swans and still won the league’s best and fairest award.
Wendell Rosewarne, who died in 2018, played into his 60s, created a Hawks club record, completing 408 games and starring on A Current Affair. Wendall had not intended to play, but in the tradition of the club, answered a plea for help when they were short of numbers in 1965.
Of all the legends, Steve Armstrong is in a class of his own. The champion rover who tragically died in 2024, nurtured players and was a formidable and at times ferocious player on the field. “He was the greatest of all time in my opinion,” Bob says. “I mean he won eight league best and fairest awards. He was a great coach; he was just everything. He coached the Hawks to a premiership in 1990, when Garth Stacey kicked eight goals in the grand final.”
Steve had taken on a daunting challenge to establish junior players in the club in the early 1990s, personally calling on parents to ask permission for their sons to play.
“They were training on North Park,” Bob recalls. “Steve had five or six kids there, that’s all he had, and I said to him, ‘You will never get juniors off the ground’.
“He said, ‘I’m determined Bobby; you know me.’”
In that first year an under-14s team under the Swans banner and Steve’s coaching won the premiership.
Old Boys Day will take place on Saturday (21 June) at Goodhew Oval before celebrating at the Astor Hotel. Contact the Goulburn Swans for more information.
