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[Caveman]

It is a bit late (well a week out) to mention this but last weeks game at the Cricket ground against North Melbourne was 30 years since the same fixture.

Back in 1979- the round 2 clash was Footscray v North Melbourne at the Western Oval. The game had a big build up because our captain in 1978 and champion and Footscray Brownlow Medallist Gary Dempsey was returning to play against us for his new club North Melbourne.

Gary Dempsey was booed and hooted throughout the entire game. For younger fans who were not around in 1979 the vitriol was worse surrounding Dempsey's departure than what was to occur 25 years later when Nathan Brown left to move to the Eastern Tigers.

The match has two points worth recalling off the top of my head. Geoff Jennings the new captain replacing Gary Dempsey in that role, kicked a fantastic goal- you can see it when clicking Geoff Jennings in the Footscray Players In Action chapter. He had three bounces and banged it through to the Geelong Road End on the run.

Secondly Footscray changed from red to blue shorts for home fixtures in 1979. For four seasons 1975, 1976, 1977 and 1978 we wore red shorts in our home games. In 1979 it was changed to blue shorts and this has remained ever since. Prior to 1975 we(and all other clubs) wore black shorts as the home team. The blue and the red are definitely an improvement in my book on the black- though I somehow have a preference for the red over the blue- it is a more even distribution of the three colours.


Anyway 30 years later we played North Melbourne again in Round 2. This time we won though and as the defined 'home' team yet it was Western v North at the MCG rather that Footscray v North at the Western Oval.