By the start of the following season, they were playing as a united club – the Minyip-Murtoa Burras.

But how did it all come together before the 1995 season?

The merger of Minyip and Murtoa occurred exceptionally suddenly.

Just months before the season, both clubs found themselves short on senior footballers and came to the mutual understanding that the only way forward was to merge.

Stunningly, for Minyip, that reality came in the wake of one of the club’s most successful periods.

The club had won three consecutive premierships just two years prior from 1991-93. 

Future Minyip-Murtoa president Nick McIntyre was playing for Minyip and was on the club’s committee in the early ’90s.

McIntyre said the club struggled to find a coach following the ’94 season, which, in turn, led to a lack of players. He said the reality that a merger was the best option set in rather suddenly.

“It was sort of flabbergasting,” McIntyre said. “We had won three flags in a row and were still in finals, yet we couldn’t get anybody to take on the coaching job before the season.

“We had pages of potential coaches – it was an absolute bombshell that we couldn’t get anyone to take on the coaching. It was like, ‘what have you got to do?’”

As they continued to search, players from the club’s glory period such as Shane McGrath, David and Hugh Drum and several others decided to retire from football.

“They were premiership players and good local guys, then all of a sudden some of our best players were leaving and it was progressively looking worse and worse,” McIntyre said.

“It got to a stage where we decided we had to tell the members the predicament we were in with the shortage of numbers and no real coach appointed. That’s when we started talking about a merger.”

Minyip approached their fellow Dunmunkle clubs – Rupanyup and Murtoa. Rupanyup was having a successful period and said it was not interested. But Murtoa was more receptive.

Murtoa stalwart and Minyip-Murtoa’s first president Malcom Schier said Murtoa was going through its own struggles with football numbers when Minyip approached them.

“It was getting harder and harder to field sides,” Schier said. “Minyip approached us and we came to the realisation that this is inevitably going to happen. This was in February 1995, so there was not much time at all to get it together before the start of the season. It was a hell of a lot of work.”

Despite having a rivalry that Schier likened in intensity to Collingwood and Carlton, both communities voted nearly unanimously in approval of the merger.

“It was embraced from the word go,” Schier said. “There was very little pushback. Everyone sort of realised that for our future, that’s what we had to do.

“We were both small towns competing with the likes of Horsham and Stawell and Ararat. We had to come together.”

Minyip finally signed Brad Dalkin of Ararat as its head coach just before the merger. Dalkin combined with Murtoa’s playing coaches Peter and Ross McFarlane to create the coaching board for the merged side.

Schier said the players embraced the merger because they were desperate to keep playing football and being competitive.

But Minyip-Murtoa’s current president Scott Arnold – who was a junior player at the time – remembers a strange atmosphere as players adapted to the change.

“I remember probably a week out from the season going down to Minyip for our first joint training session – it was pretty eerie,” Arnold said. “I think most of the Murtoa guys got changed in the away rooms. 

“It definitely took some time to get used to.”

Evidently, the players needed just one season to become accustomed to the change.

While they had a middling season in 1995, Minyip-Murtoa went on to have the most successful period in the club’s young history thereafter, winning three consecutive premierships from 1996 to 1998.

“The first year was just a get together, sussing it all out after we came together so suddenly,” Schier said.

“But after that we really started planning, getting everything together and getting to know each other.

“Winning three flags was a good reward.”

McIntyre said through the merger process, the club was able to create a loyal foundation that lives on today.

“One of the things about our club has always been the loyalty of the locals,” McIntyre said. “When we merged, a lot of other clubs chased our players but when all of them were approached they said ‘it’s still our club.’

“Now we have generations of players coming through. We really came together and now have a proud history.”