RECORD FEATURE: GGGM LIONS

1976:
Ganmain: 20.8 (128)
Narrandera: 14.17 (101)
A stroll down memory lane at Ganmain is signposted with familiar names.
But for 40 years, the names of five footballers have carried near mythical status: Joey Daby, Greg Peris, Joel McLennan, Cliff Hampton and Eddie Motlop. No mention of club history is complete without them – the gifted Aboriginal players who came down from Darwin and helped the Ganmain Maroons secure their 15th and final South West League flag back in 1976.
“I suppose you could say Cyclone Tracy started it all in 1974,” recalls a former GGGM president Barry Logan.
With Darwin being rebuilt, Alan Smith came to coach Ganmain in 1975 and brought his wife’s brother, Joey Daby, along.
“He should’ve been in Melbourne – he was a brilliant footballer,” Trevor McPherson says of Daby.
Smith headed back to Darwin at the end of 75 but told the Maroons, ‘If you can get Joey to come back next year and get a bloke called Greg ‘Poopy’ Peris to come down with him, you’ve got the two best footballers in Darwin.’
In February ‘76, Garney Logan’s phone rang. It was Daby: “There’s six of us coming down!” Garney listened as Joey rattled the names off and heard him finish with, “and Poopy Peris”.
After a trial game in Wagga it was clear all could play. Barry Logan says a meeting with players was held to clear the air. “We said, ‘If we take them, it’s going to cost some of you blokes positions’. We put it to the players — they’d seen them play that day and it was about 90% all in favour.”
Signing the late Greg Leech as coach was another story – only sealed at the 11th hour after an adventurous trip to Melbourne.
“We ended up having to buy about a thousand bucks worth of Mitcham Football Club membership tickets!” Barry Logan says.
And it was only good luck that Barry remembered Frank Bourke, who’d gone to Ganmain in the 1950s, apparently had a pub somewhere in Melbourne.
“So we tracked him down, went in and told him the story and we asked could he cash a cheque for a thousand,” Barry says.
“He said, ‘Well I don’t know you. But you look like a Logan and you sound like a Logan’… so he cashed the thousand dollars or whatever it was.”
Leech was cleared late on Friday before the opening round against Narrandera. And the Eagles had every right to curse given six months later he led Ganmain to the flag with a team including Wayne, Greg and Dan Carroll, James Gumbleton, Graham Woolnough, and Russell Campbell (who kicked 10 goals in the grand final) among others. Vice-captain Trevor McPherson says it was the best side he ever played in, with Daby and his Darwin mates playing a different game. “They brought the play-on-handball football into the club. We were more the kick-mark but they brought the play-on and keep the ball moving.”
Peris was a powerful centre-half-forward whose towering 70-metre torpedoes were legendary in the NT as well as the South West and his little mate Daby lived up to expectations.
“He was a great footballer,” Barry Logan says of Daby.
“Just like Rioli – the prop, the weave, the magic. He could kick 10. Some days, they’d stick him at full-forward on some big 6’4 bloke and he’d either run up his back and just tap it down and recover it and run rings around him and play on.”
Courageous too. After Narrandera had beaten the Maroons in the second semi-final, Daby returned early from a broken jaw. He took the wires out himself, wore rugby league headgear and, with a five-goal haul and ‘bullet passes’ to Campbell (who kicked four), ensured Ganmain got over the top of Coolamon and a shot at the Eagles on grand final day.
After the semi-final wake-up, the grand final was all-but over by halftime with the Maroons 65 points in front. They withstood a Narrandera revival to claim Ganmain’s only premiership between 1969 and 1984.

1996:
GGGM: 18.13 (121)
Wagga Tigers: 9.10 (64)
If 1976 is best remembered for the Darwin crew, 1996 premiership was a family affair. There were only nine surnames among the 20 players who won the Lions’ fourth RFL flag in 15 years: Carroll (5), Hamblin (3), Lawton (3), Walsh (2), McPherson (2), Crozier (2), Cruikshank, Steele and Menzies.
Led by Scott Lawton, they broke the stranglehold that Terry Daniher’s Tigers had on the competition (for a season, at least).
Christen McPherson was only 17, still at school, and did the job at centre-half-back of containing the Essendon legend.
Down by five goals midway through the second quarter, the Lions began to haul themselves into the contest. The switch of John Lawton into the ruck at halftime proved a masterstroke as they got right on top in the third quarter and didn’t look back. 
Jed Lawton had brought Scott down in 1994. More than once in 1996, he had to remind himself that this was his little brother – eight years his junior – who he used to take to speech therapy as a child: “Here he is giving me some of the biggest sprays of all time,” Jed says.
The Daily Advertiser’s back page heralded GGGM the “Lion Kings” but there were “Queens” as well. The B-grade netballers, coached by Rachelle Cox, won the club’s first premiership on the courts, beating Turvey Park in a tight encounter. At the attacking end, Leanne Mathew and Stacey McGarry shone in a team including Lisa Carroll, Briony Crozier, Nadine Logan and Natalie Milne.
“We’d worked pretty hard in the netball over the years and that was our first premiership ever in netball,” Kirralea Logan says. “It was a great year and it was pretty big for the club.”

2006:
GGGM: 13.23 (101)
Leeton-Whitton: 9.8 (62)
A decade later, GGGM were the competition’s dominant team and on track for a hat-trick of flags. It was a side that bridged eras. Christen McPherson and Scott Hamblin had played in the 1996 success and were among the old stagers, along with Shane Lenon, new coach Christin Macri and cult figure ‘George’ Carroll.
“He was probably the one who had the most cheek and character about him,” Macri says.
“He was quite amusing to play next to – you get that extra fun playing with those guys.”
But it was also a team full the next generation, coming of age in the Lions’ golden era.
“It’s probably one of the best teams I’ve ever played in – all over the ground, we had some great players and we had a real good mix of old and young blokes and middle-aged blokes,” Nathan McPherson says.
After they’d beaten the Crows by 180 points (yes, 180 points!) a fortnight earlier, GGGM got the job done on a horrendously windy day, sealing Macri’s first flag as a coach.
“I just love the place and the community – it reminds me of home when you come from Victoria.”