Sunshine Football Club (VFA)
| Sunshine | ||
|---|---|---|
| Names | ||
| Full name | Sunshine Football Club | |
| Nickname(s) | Crows, Shiners | |
| Club details | ||
| Founded | 1938 | |
| Dissolved | 1989 | |
| Colours | Navy blue and white | |
| Competition |
Footscray District FL (1938–1958) Metropolitan League (1951–1958) Victorian Football Association (1959–1989) |
|
| Premierships |
FDFL – B Grade: 1946 Metropolitan – 1951 VFA – Div 2: 1971 |
|
| Ground(s) | Selwyn Park (until 1965) Skinner Reserve (1966–1989) |
|
| Uniforms | ||
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Sunshine Football Club, nicknamed The Crows, was an Australian rules football club which played in the Victorian Football Association (VFA) from 1959 until 1989. The club colours were navy blue and white.
Formed in 1938 as the Sunshine Districts Football Club the club had to differentiate from the Sunshine Football Club that was competing in the Victorian Sub Districts Football League. The original Sunshine went into recess after the 1940 season. The district club managed to remain viable during the war (WWII) competing in the Footscray District League . In 1946 the club won the B grade Grand Final and was Runners-up in the A grade Grand final in 1949.
Sunshine was a large football club in a strong growth area of Melbourne's west. In 1950 it was approached and agreed to field a team in the new Metropolitan Football League whilst maintaining a side in the lower grades of the FDFL. It won the Metropolitan 1951 premiership and was runners-up in 1952, 1955, and 1958. By 1958, it operated two teams in the Metropolitan League and three teams in the Footscray District League and had more than 200 registered players.
From the early 1950s, it had actively sought admission to the Victorian Football Association; and it was admitted at short notice just before the 1959 VFA season, as a direct result of the sudden expulsion of the Prahran Football Club. It abandoned its blue and white hooped guernsey (which clashed with Moorabbin), and adopted a navy blue guernsey with a white yoke. Concentrating on the VFA, the club withdrew its teams from the FDFL.
Upon its admission to the VFA, the club played its home games at Selwyn Park, before moving to Skinner Reserve, Braybrook, in 1966.
In 1962, the club adopted Panthers as its nickname, but it did not make any particular effort in promoting the nickname to the wider public. This caused a dispute in 1963, when Waverley adopted Panthers as its nickname, and spent around £100 promoting it before discovering that Sunshine was already using the name. Sunshine ultimately abandoned the Panthers nickname and replaced it with Crows, which became its official nickname for the remainder of its time in the VFA.
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