1986 Articles

THE MERGER TALKS

OUR LAST YEAR AS THE GREEK FOOTBALL CLUB (1961-1986)

 After an amazing 1985 (3 Premierships) being our first A1, A1 Reserves and A10 Premierships in Amateur League, John Svigos stepped down as President after one year along with many other Committee personnel. Michael Varvounis reluctantly took on the President’s role. Gary Richardson was reappointed Senior Coach, 1985 B Grade Premiership Coach George Evreniadis was displaced and replaced by Stan Condous.

What a start to the 1986 season. The last Coach to go after winning a Premiership was Bob Alexander after the 1982 win in A2.  George took the B team from rock bottom to top. His team was 1 win and 4 losses in the first 5 games but went on undefeated to win the Club’s first B Grade title in Amateur League.  Credit to George, he stayed on Committee for that year and was never seen at Camden Oval. 

Not only did most of the Committee leave there was a large exodus of players as well.  Peter Phillipou took on an assisted Coaches role at West Torrens and took with him 1985 Premiership players, John Economou and sharp shooter John Panagaris, both of whom went on to play League football.  Dragan Tankosic journeyed to Woodville and also played League football, Chris Grech and Chris Dimatrakopoulos both retired on Premierships, apologies to those not mentioned.

New recruits to the Club to name a few were Aris Gatoudis, Nick Diasinis, Sandro Ferraro, Nando Giannoni and Simon Phillis.

After 13 games the A’s were sitting in 8th position with 5 wins and 8 losses. The B’s sitting top and the C’s were in 8th position with 4 wins and 9 losses.

Stan Condous’ B grade continued the great form from the previous years’ success.  Now the A grade needed to get cracking as relegation was looking them in the eye.  The exodus of players at the start of the season was starting to show and was looking bad. Gary mustered his players and finished the year in 6th position and survived relegation. The B’s finished third. 

Sadly Gary was reported and suspended at the end of the season and with Stan Condous not available to coach the 1st semi-final Gary coached from the grandstand using a walkie talkie (mobile phones were not around then). Sadly the B team lost the first semi final.

On Presentation night Aris Gatoudis won the Club’s Best and Fairest

Peter Elia and Nick Mourcella were both awarded Life Membership.

Emanuel Politis started to write a book on the history of the first 25 years of the Greek Football Club and due to circumstances at the time he was unable to complete it.  Nick Mourcella offered to continue with the completion of the book along with the help of Dennis Paxinos and Tom Frossinakis.  This book was launched on the evening and almost sold out.

 Also during the evening the teams of the three decades were announced and also the team of the first 25 years.

As history shows this was to be the last season played under the banner of The Greek Football Club. This came about as a result of a proposal to merge with Camden Football Club earlier in the year. Peter Tucker, a stalwart of Camden presented the proposal to the Committee.  Two to three weeks later a special meeting was held for all members and players many of whom attended and Peter Tucker presented his case well and answered all questions.  Next move was to hold another special meeting to vote and was attended by approximately 60 members.  The feeling during the week before was that the proposal was going to be thrown out.  On the night of the meeting however all but 5 members voted for the merger to go ahead and as history shows - it was a good move.