Footscray Hockey Club veteran Greg Hopkins got a rather large monkey off his back – capturing his first premiership medallion at his 12th attempt.
Hopkins killed the story that had been doing the rounds at the club for most of his career, the one he had to retell new players and was forced to rekindle with long-time club mates.
The 51-year-old’s record in grand finals was a re-occurring story because it was just so hard to believe that his glittering 40-plus years in hockey had not yielded a single premiership and that he even endured 11 losing grand finals.
Hopkins, a long-suffering Western Bulldogs supporter, wondered if he would go through his sports life as both a player and fan without experiencing the thrill of a premiership.
Hopkins not only landed that elusive premiership, but bobbed up to score a crucial second-half goal against Powerhouse/St Kilda in the metro 2 north grand final.
The icing on the cake for Hopkins was being able to experience the feat with his son, Ryan.
“It was a good story for a long time, but the burning desire to win one was always there,” Hopkins said. “To have the opportunity to do that and have my son playing in the same team was great.”
Hopkins might well have experienced a premiership earlier in his career had he not been too good for the division that Footscray’s top side was playing at the time.
In 1985, the Bulldogs were in Hockey Victoria’s third tier A3 division, but Hopkins was good enough to try his hand at the top flight, securing a move to Powerhouse, which was a stand-alone club at the time before merging with St Kilda. That year, all five Bulldogs men’s sides won premierships, but Hopkins was wielding his stick on the other side of town.
This time, Hopkins would make sure he would stand atop the dais as a premiership winner, scoring a goal to put the Bulldogs 3-1 up and out of reach in the grand final.
When the fourth goal was banged in, it gave Hopkins a chance for the accomplishment to sink in.
“I went off and had a spell on the bench with 15 minutes to go and the realisation started to sink in that it was actually going to happen,” he said.
“I went back on with about five minutes to go and it was just party time, really. I was pretty excited.”
