Men's Football
The Pakenham Football Club can trace its history back to a meeting held at the Gembrook Hotel on 16th March 1892. During that year and for the better part of a decade afterwards the club engaged only in scratch matches against local rivals such as Berwick, Cranbourne, Dandenong and Warragul. Pakenham’s competitive history got underway during the early 1900s when the club joined the Berwick District Football Association. The 1909 season brought a first ever premiership, and five years later this success was repeated.
The 1920s saw Pakenham embarking on a peripatetic existence which at one point spawned four successive flags in three different competitions. The club finally found a long term home in 1927 when it affiliated with the West Gippsland Football League. Pakenham remained a member of this competition until it merged with the Gippsland Latrobe Valley Football League to form the West Gippsland Latrobe Football League after the 2001 football season. During that time the Lions were by some measure the competition’s most successful club, claiming a total of twenty-three senior grade premierships. Nearest rival Garfield won eight.
Pakenham’s success story has continued since the club commenced in the Mornington Peninsula Nepean Football League in 2002. Already the club has played off in the senior grade grand final four times, emerging victorious in 2002 against Narre Warren and 2009 at the expense of Doveton.
GREAT ERAS: Pakenham has twice won four consecutive flags, the first time from 1924-27 with three different captains – Halloran, Clancy and Scott. Neville Powles was coach the next time the club won four in a row, with seven players appearing in all four premierships from 1987-90 – Powles, Greg Atkins, Adam Ladbrook, Stuart Fraser, Derrick Brown, Danny Monckton and Michael Utber.
CLUB LEGENDS: Pakenham Football Club has fostered Hawthorn premiership players and Victorian representatives Peter Russo and Ray Jencke. Don McIntyre left for Carlton in 1935 after two years with the Lions and won a best-and-fairest in 1937 and a flag in 1938. But Norm ‘Widow’ Jackson is arguably the club’s greatest name. He started as a 14-year-old in 1935 and retired in 1958. Jackson won a flag before joining the army during World War Two. On his return, he played in seven premiership teams and won two best-and-fairests. Currently, past Pakenham player Tyson Goldsack is playing for AFL side Collingwood and was a member of the 2010 Grand Final Premiership Team.
