Eacham Football History

In early 1985, Mr Martin Grandelis, who had just arrived on the Tablelands to take up the position of Principal at the Upper Barron School, was asked to take the minutes of a meeting of the Eacham Junior Rugby League.  This was the start of a long involvement with the Junior Rugby League and his interest in its history was sparked shortly afterwards when he and several students were cleaning out the storeroom at the school and came upon an old rugby league shield.  Over twenty years later in 2008, Martin began his study with the result some five years later being a book on the local junior football league entitled, 'A History of the Eacham JRL 1969-1999, the first thirty years'.  At the recent launch in Atherton, at an impressive event in the Merriland Pavilion, Martin told the crowd of a couple of hundred football fans how more than 500 people had shared their experiences and old photographs which along with detailed records of the League, enabled him to put the story together.  Mayor Tom Gilmore of Mareeba had the honour of launching this large 600 page volume with its 825 photos.  The book details the champion teams and Grand Finals triumphs along with the controveries and upheavals of that first thirty years and it also records the growth of the professionalism in this junior sport.  Although I won't be in a hurry to obtain a copy as I was a soccer playing boy in my younger days, I found that many of my cousins and school mates appear in the book.  A truly impressive work of local history that could find a place in the home of any local footy fan.