Snapshot in Time: When the Hawks were the Geraldton Fire Brigades Team

Many fans regard their favourite players as heroes, but in the early days of the Brigades Football Club the team was made up of actual real-life heroes. Brigades, or the Hawks, were once known as the Geraldton Fire Brigades Team. Full of brave firefighters, the team back in the early part of the 20th century would have been made of stern stuff. In this week’s Snapshot in Time, we look back at a premiership team photo taken back in 1912 which included players, patrons and club hierarchy. World War I would be declared a couple of years later and you have to wonder how many of these young men enlisted in the Great War and never made it home. It would be about 50 years before the Great Northern Football League was established in 1961 and Brigades was one of the eight founding teams. The league side won their first GNFL flag in 1962 and have won seven premierships in total, including last year’s. This compares with Towns’ 13 premierships, Rovers’ 10, Railways’ 12, Mullewa’s nine, Northampton’s six and Chapman Valley’s four. Women in Geraldton started playing in their own competition 106 years after this photo was taken. The Brigades women have won two premierships — in 2019 and 2020 — since the GNFLW was launched in 2018. Snapshot is an initiative of the Geraldton Regional Library. For more information or to donate a historical photo or slide, call 9956 6659 or library@cgg.wa.gov.au