Dusties successful from the start

The Warragul Industrial Football club was formed virtually on the eve of the start of the 1948 Ellinbank and District Football League season.

That certainly was no handicap as the team stormed to the premiership in its first year under captain-coach Vic Piazza.

It wasn't all smooth sailing though.

The club had to ask for a bye in the first round because it still hadn't arranged a ground to play on.

Nor had it any guernseys for the players to wear.

Local George Hoskins, who had played in the VFL with the Fitzroy football club and also represented Victoria, managed to procure a set of Fitzroy's maroon and blue jumpers, colours Dusties still carries today.

After the dream premiership winning start Dusties were prominent throughout the early years regularly playing in the finals, losing successive grand finals in 1953 and 1954 before claiming its second EDFL title in the premiership decider against Neerim South in 1960.

The team went through a lean period in the early 1970s, losing 51 games in a row, before being premiers again in 1976 and adding two more flags in 1986 and 1996.

In 2018 when the AFL reviewed structures of the leagues in Gippsland Warragul Industrials joined the West Gippsland Football Netball Competition that became a 12-club competition involving clubs from the West and South Gippsland areas, Bass Coast and the outer south-east of greater Melbourne.

In its first few decades Warragul Industrials (football and its netball team that played in the Ellinbank and District Netball Association) were based at what was known as "Millers Oval", a ground behind Miller's industrial factory in Sutton St and wedged between the golf course and a farm.

The club was also the prime mover for the then Warragul Shire to develop a new football/ netball complex in the town which it did in the early 1970s with the establishment of Western Park in Tarwin St.