The Bendigo Gold Football Club was an

Australian rules football Australian football, also called Australian rules football or Aussie rules, or more simply football or footy, is a contact sport played between two teams of 18 players on an oval field, often a modified cricket ground. Points are scored by k ...

club based in

Bendigo Bendigo ( ) is a city in Victoria, Australia, located in the Bendigo Valley near the geographical centre of the state and approximately north-west of Melbourne, the state capital. As of 2019, Bendigo had an urban population of 100,991, makin ...

Victoria Victoria most commonly refers to: * Victoria (Australia), a state of the Commonwealth of Australia * Victoria, British Columbia, provincial capital of British Columbia, Canada * Victoria (mythology), Roman goddess of Victory * Victoria, Seychelle ...

, Australia. The club played in the

Victorian Football League The Victorian Football League (VFL) is an Australian rules football league in Australia serving as one of the second-tier regional semi-professional competitions which sit underneath the fully professional Australian Football League (AFL). It ...

(VFL) from 1998 until 2014, under the nicknames Diggers, Bombers and Gold at different times. The club disbanded at the conclusion of the

2014 VFL season The 2014 Victorian Football League season is the 133rd season of the Victorian Football Association/Victorian Football League Australian rules football competition. The premiership was won by the Footscray Bulldogs, the reserves team of the A ...

History

The club entered the VFL in 1998 as the Bendigo Diggers. It struggled for on-field success, winning only seven games in its first three seasons, and enduring successive winless seasons in 2001 and 2002. Starting from 2003 the club formed an

affiliation Affiliation or affiliate may refer to: * Affiliate (commerce), a legal form of entity relationship used in Business Law * Affiliation (family law), a legal form of family relationship * Affiliate marketing * Affiliate network or affiliation platf ...

with the

Essendon Football Club The Essendon Football Club, nicknamed the Bombers, is a professional Australian rules football club. The club plays in the Australian Football League (AFL), the game's premier competition. The club was formed by the McCracken family in their A ...

in the

Australian Football League The Australian Football League (AFL) is the only fully professional competition of Australian rules football. Through the AFL Commission, the AFL also serves as the sport's governing body and is responsible for controlling the laws of the gam ...

, under which Essendon could field its reserves players in the Bendigo team. The Diggers mascot was changed to the Bendigo Bombers and the guernsey changed to black with a red sash, to match those of the Essendon AFL club. Over the following ten years of the clubs' affiliation, the club played finals five times, with its best finish and sole finals victory coming in

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, when the club finished fourth. The club also endured another winless season during the affiliation, in

2009 File:2009 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The vertical stabilizer of Air France Flight 447 is pulled out from the Atlantic Ocean; Barack Obama becomes the first African American to become President of the United States; 2009 Iran ...

. After the completion of the 2011 season, Essendon announced that the 2012 season would be the last season of affiliation with Bendigo; Essendon fielded a stand-alone reserves team in the VFL from 2013, and Bendigo returned to fielding a stand-alone senior team. To reflect the impending change, the team changed its name to the Bendigo Gold, starting in 2012 (the final season of the clubs' affiliation). Without access to the professional players or financial support offered by its affiliation with Essendon, Bendigo quickly struggled to remain competitive as a stand-alone club. Bendigo was winless in both 2013 and 2014 – which, when added to the 2001 and 2002 seasons, represented four consecutive winless seasons as a stand-alone club. In June 2014, the club concluded that it was not financially viable in the long term; it consequently disbanded and left the VFL following the 2014 season.

Honour board

References

External links

Official website
(Archive, 15 Aug 2012) * Former Victorian Football League clubs Sport in Bendigo 1998 establishments in Australia 2014 disestablishments in Australia Bendigo Australian rules football clubs established in 1998 Sports clubs disestablished in 2014 {{AFL-team-stub