BRENDAN LINES

IT was the decision “no one wanted to make”.
After 112 years, the Lyrup Lions’ roar has fallen silent – permanently.
A decision to dissolve the town’s football and netball clubs was made at a special general meeting days ago, following a long and failed struggle to players and keep its committee functioning.
Lyrup’s history has been chequered with periods of recession, however president Neville Nattrass said it was a heart-breaking final call.
“It’s hard to be the ones who are responsible, saying ‘yep we are going’ but we had to,”
he said. “We looked at going into recession this year but you still have to run a committee and we struggled to get a committee.
“We’re disappointed we can’t continue.”
Lyrup’s history with Riverland football goes back to some of the region’s earliest known games, with matches recorded against Renmark as far back as the mid-1890s.
The club was officially established in 1909 and won the Murray Football Association’s inaugural premiership that year.
The club joined the Upper Murray Football Association’s (UMFL) B grade competition in 1923.
In 1971, the Lyrup Football Club (LFC) joined the UMFL’s Independent competition, now the RFL Independent competition.
The club’s home ground was built from the ground up by the Lyrup community when the club moved from its former clay-pan home on Old Lyrup Road.
Long-time club supporter Dot Healy said she remembers the club’s old digs well.
“We had very fond memories of our old oval and the laughs we had down there,” she said.
“The planting of the new oval was an achievement. We had 30 people out there with a dip bucket planting grass. Heads were down and away we went.”
Mrs Healy and her husband Neville share nearly 90 years of involvement with the club and Mrs Healy said the local supporter base had kept the club alive.
“It’s very, very sad to see it go but there’s no way you can keep that club going without people from Lyrup,” she said.
“Players that are coming from elsewhere, you can’t get them interested in the heart of the club.”
Mrs Healy said one of her fondest memories was never missing her grandsons play a home game for the Lions.
“I had my husband Neville play in number eight, my son and my grandson play in number eight,” she said.
“In one year, I had my grandson, his father Shane and my two grandsons-in-law play in one game. It was a grand final and we won.”
Mrs Healy attributes much of Lyrup’s success to the contributions of its indigenous players.
“I’ll swear we would have never kept the club alive... if it hadn’t been for the Abdullas, Lindsays, Wilsons and Carters,” she said.
As the Lions are laid to rest, Mr Nattrass said the club’s reputation would be its legacy.
“It will be missed for sure because Lyrup had reputation of being a good social team,” he said, “as well as being very competitive.”
Lyrup won its last premiership in 2015, beating Brown’s Well by 26 points in the grand final.
Coincidentally, concerns also surround Brown’s Well’s participation in the 2021 season, after the club staged a special general meeting recently. The Murray Pioneer understands the club is also struggling for player numbers this season.