By Greg Blake
Want to hear a spooky tale? It’s about two great and powerful clubs who once met in a battle so fierce that it left one on the brink of lunacy and the other lost in the wilderness for more than a decade. Both clubs disappeared virtually overnight, in the wake of the grand final of the damned in 2001 and the spawning of a legend we will call the Ollerton curse.
Our tale begins on the evening of Sunday, August 12, 2001, and Peter Tsaklis had just watched his beloved Heidelberg United Alexander win a thrilling Victoria Premier League grand final against Port Melbourne at Lakeside Stadium.
The former two-time Alexander president, Tsaklis was a masterful when engineering media column centimeters for his club. Journos were sparring partners. He courted controversy, weaponised hyperbole and delivered headlines with a wink and a smile.
The 2001 grand final is still cherished by Alexander fans. Played out under a glorious, silvery Melbourne winter sky, the mercury hit an unseasonable 19 degrees. Chasing its first Victorian crown in 11 years Alexander went a couple of goals ahead. The Sharks fought back to force a 2-2 game into extra time and, ultimately, penalties.
The Warriors took the shoot-out 4-3 and Tsaklis was in fine form after the game. Whether he believed his un-filtered gas-baggery or not, Tsaklis handed the media their headline with a bold prediction of Heidelberg United returning to former greatness within two years. “We’ll stay one more season in the Victorian competition and then we’ll go for the national league,” Tsaklis declared. “We’ll be in the national league again in two years. The NSL constitution says there should be four clubs from Melbourne in the league. There are two vacancies,” he said.
Tsaklis was a ripper. Today’s sterilized game could use a Peter Tsaklis or two. Always a big hitter, his bold post 2001 grand final declaration was to be Tsaklis’ biggest- ever swing-and-a-miss. He couldn’t have been more wrong, usually more circumspect during his coaching caeer, even first-year Warrior boss, Peter Ollerton, was predicting a bight future for Alexander.
“To win the grand final is full credit to the players and the club”, Ollerton told the press after the game. “They’ve (the club) been in the wilderness for a few years and now they’re going for more stability. The foundations are there for them (to get back into the NSL),” he said.
What followed in the wake of 2001 triumph, well, you simply could not make that sh*t up. If Hollywood had scripted as much, it would likely be dismissed as sheer flight of fantasy.
But that was all still to play out. The focus on grand final day was the Warrior’s’ wonderful 2001 grand final win, the success clinching the club’s fourth top grade Victorian Championship triumph. It was the first grand final of the new century – there was no finals series decider in 2000 – and it was Heidelberg’s first state success since 1990.
Grand final stories write themselves, but there were several sub-plots woven into the narrative of the 2001 final. All compelling enough, even before a ball was even kicked in anger. Port – coached by wily Harry Chalkitis – went into the game as favorite, having finished top of the ladder one game ahead of the Warriors. They then trounced Heidelberg 4-1 in the major semi final just a fortnight beforehand. His opposite number was Ollerton, already a legend of the game in Australia.
It was a wonderful re-match for the grand final, the tone was set very early on when George Georgiadis nailed a pearler. The type of grand final goal that you score in your imagination when you’re a kid alone in the back yard as the street lights come on and Mum’s calling you in for dinner. You curl the winner between the lemon tree and the clothesline and pump your fists on the way in to the dinner table. Then you grow up to become an accountant or taxi driver.
Georgardis got to do it for real. Finishing off a move initiated by Nick Schwal, powered by the vision of Peter Kakos, cleverly kept alive by Nick Lazarevski’s 180-degree swivel in a phone box and delivering back to meet Schwal’s dash forward. Schwal’s pressured cross for Georgiadis was rewarded with a spectacular match-opener, followed by an adrenalin-fuelled celebration..
Schwal’s hurried delivery skipped once then bobbled awkwardly as the galloping Georgiadis reached the top of the penalty area. Nearly halting stride to control the bounce, Georgiadis managed to launch a calculated right-footer into the top right corner of the net, before wheeling about and sprinting to celebrate in front of fans in the grandstand, where he was swamped by joyous teammates.
“It’s the quickest I’ve ran all year after celebrating that goal”, Georgiadis reflected many years later. “That goal came around pretty quickly and a lot of us say it was, you know, a bit of a miss-kick. But if you think about it and you have a look at it, the ball came over pretty quickly and I actually controlled it and then, to ping it to the top corner you know, Chris Wardle, the goalkeeper, on the other end I just saw him going for it and he had no chance”, he recalled.
This game would prove to be the final leg of a rare personal hat-trick of consecutive Victorian top-flight championships for Georgiadis. He moved to Green Gully following Alexander’s humiliating relegation down to State One in 1998, the first time Alexander had plunged below the state’s elite level in three decades. Georgiadis joined Green Gully just in time to play in successive championships in 1999 and 2000.
Heidelberg’s underwhelming return to Premier League in 2000 resulted in a massive recruiting campaign for 2001. Georgiadis and Eric Vassailiadis (Fawkner) were lured back to Olympic Village, along with new faces in Schwal (from Bulleen), Lazarevski (Thomastown) and the late and sadly missed Peter Kakos (Gippsland Falcons),
Goalkeeper, Jim Kourtis, and 2000 Victorian Gold Medal winner, Damian Vojtek were signed from Sydney Olympic and St Albans, respectively. All the new faces featured in Heidelberg’s 2001 bid for glory, all under the guidance of new boss, Ollerton, who was already a three-time Victorian championship-winning coach with Croydon City and Preston Lions.
Despite falling behind Port would rally, as expected. In his pre-game Chalkitis made his intentions clear. “We’ll go and try score goals and hopefully we’ll score one more than Heidelberg. If it’s 5-4 for Port Melbourne, it will have been one hell of a game and everybody is going to enjoy it,” Chalkitis said.
The grand final was a belter and the 4,200 crowd roared its approvaI. It wasn’t 5-4, but the free-flowing Sharks were always up for it as they chased the single-goal deficit. Peter Psarros won his second Golden Boot as league top gun in 2001 and Port boasted the league’s most prolific attack over the course of the season, but on grand final day they were finishing as haphazardly as drunks playing darts.
And when they weren’t blowing chances, they had Alexander keeper, Jim Kourtis, to contend with between the sticks. Leading Heidelberg’s league-best defence into the finals, Kourtis added ‘Goalkeeper of the Year’ and the ‘Bill Fleming Medal’ to his championship and career-best success in 2001.
Port launched itself into the second half, but Psarros spooned one over the woodwork and Kourtis was the equal of a Mitch Pino shot before the momentum of the game swayed back in favour of still probing Heidelberg, although it neither broke nor even bent the resolve of the boys from the area the locals still refer to as “the Borough”.
Alexander’s season was built around a core of players capable of consistently maintaining a lofty standard on game day. On grand final day in 2001 a remarkable nine of Heidelberg United’s starting eleven would go on to play in excess of 200 games at this level or higher before they either stepped away or stpped down a grade..
Mile Medjedovic managed a stunning 343 Victorian Premier League games before he called it a day in 2012, leaving him somewhere on the all-time list of the top 25 of games played in Victorian Premier League/NPL history. So, that’s great.
Medjedovic is also one splendid reason that grand finals are awesome. The season is distilled into a very simple no excuses, no next week, no do-overs, no regrets-type scenario. And one act of courage or desperation or inspiration or beauty stamps your bingo card for all time.
Medjedovic got and seized his moment an hour into the grand final, launching himself into a spectacular horizontal dive just wide and to the right of the goal face to meet a sweeping cross from Georgiadis. His leap and superb glancing header to make it 2-0 should have decided the game.
But Peter Tsolakis was inspirational off the bench for Port, the veteran setting up Psarros to get one back for the Sharks with a tick over ten left on the clock. Alexander fans were still haunted by the grand final thriller in 1996, when Alexander and Altona Magic ended at 3-3 before the Warriors went down narrowly in a penalty shoot-out.
“We got to that last dance and we knew Port Melbourne was a great team to play against, they had some quality players,” explained Georgiadis,, who’d spent a season with the Sharks in 1995. “But we were set up in a way to win that game, even if it was in penalties. We had, people like Jimmy (Kourtis) that were ready to go and people to take those (penalties) and score them”.
But there was no stopping the surging Sharks, with a late Tsolakis cross angled into his own net by Heidelberg skipper, Cameron Brown. The 2-2 deadlock couldn’t be broken. Kourtis was hailed as the hero for stopping Port during Golden Goal extras time and again by saving Port’s second and third penatty attempts in the shoot-out. Cameron Brown found redemption in nailing the final, game-wnning spot kick to win the the game, claim the championship and unofficially launch Alexander’s bid to regain its rightful place in the national competition.
“It’s been a great season all-round. It’s great for the club. It’s been starved for success for some time”, said Heidelberg ‘keeper Jim Kourtis after the game.
“It was a great feeling to be part of”, Georgiadis declared.
“To be honest I’m totally shocked that we won it”. was Ollerton’s post-game response. ” I didn’t think we could win it from day one. I thought if we could finish in the top five that would be a miracle. We finished second and that still astounded me”. More astonishment would follow.
The 2001 Victorian championship-winning Heidelberg United team was: Jim Kourtis, Sean Cunningham, Nick Schwal, Eric Vassiliadis,Cameron Brown, Damian Vojtek, Peter Di Iorio (David DePropertis 74), Peter Kakos, Mile Medjedovic, George Georgiadis and Nick Lazarevski (Alfonso Opazo 62) Coach: Peter Ollerton
When the players, coaching staff, volunteers, medicos, board members and fans of both Port Melbourne and Heidelberg United finally found time to rest after the hectic 2021 grand final, they could close their eyes safe in the knowledge that their respective clubs were Victorian Premier League royalty and they could comfortably look forward to 2002 and beyond.
On that grand final night who could have predicted that Heidelberg United would not win another Victorian title for seventeen years, the longest championship drought in club history. Or that Port Melbourne has yet to win a Victorian championship in the quarter century since 2001, nor have the Sharks even made another grand final appearance.
To this day not a single soul has ever been able to thoroughly explain what happened to the Sharks or the Warriors following on from the 2001 grand final. Heidelberg United’s follow-up was to finish dead last and get relegated. Port did slightly better, but missed the finals before ending the 2003 season stone motherless last and joining Alexander in division one in 2004.
It wasn’t a fall from grace by Heidelberg United, so much as an epic Michael Bay-directed flaming, explosive, jarring crash and burn. Alexander’s plummet from state champions to dead last the following season was and is a record worst-ever over the 117 seasons of Victorian senior competition.
I’ll repeat it. Alexander’s champs in 2001 to chumps in 2002 effort remains an all-time Victorian worst. Since 1909 only one other team has been crowned champion one year and slumped to a wooden spoon the next. They were Northumberland and Durham United in 1922 and 1923, although the league only consisted of eight teams in 1923. Alexander tumbled down fourteen places in 2002 .
In Heidelberg’s case, the rot set in in the opening weeks of their title defence. Following a 1-5 defeat at Altona Magic, a 1-4 home defeat at the hands of Preston and a galling 3-6 loss at Port Melbourne in the opening three rounds of 2002, Ollerton resigned and Alexander handed the car keys to former Melbourne Knights’ champion, Vlado Vanis.
“We now have to concentrate on getting the club off the bottom (of the VPL ladder)”, declared Vanis. Presumably his concentration was intense, but to no avail. And for a period following the 2001 grand final win, Alexander became something of an unpredictable soap opera, addictive though, as it alternated between tugging at the heartstrings, unexpected plot twists, implausible outcomes and dramatic mood swings.
The club was relegated twice but managed a (losing) Premier League grand final appearance in between, before the George Katsakis NPL era swept the club into the big end of town and another grand final success. Seventeen years after winning the first grand final of the millenium, at a ground that didn’t exist when they did, Alexander won its fifth Victorian crown by beating Avondale at AAMI Park.
The Ollerton curse? That’s an affliction exclusive to Port Melbourne. But it haunts the Sharks to this very day. Port were a great side to watch when they first burst into the Premier League in 1994, under coach Takis Svigos. They played with attacking flair and a swagger and took the league by storm.
A day by the bay watching the boys in the blue and red verticals – a sea breeze drifting in on a slight southerly – was a day well spent. In ’94 they were the league’s most prolific goalscoring team and made the grand final at first attempt. Port lost against a Preston Lions team coached by Peter Ollerton.
A year later in 1995 the high scoring Sharks finished top of the ladder but fell one week shy of the grand final, against Bulleen in the preliminary final. The game finished scoreless after extra time. Bulleen won the game on penalties. Their coach, Peter Ollerton.
They reckon bad luck comes in threes. Top scoring Sharks finish top of the ladder in 2001, only having to face a Heidelberg United Alexander team coached by, yep, Peter Ollerton, in the 2001 grand final. Port Melbourne has never recovered.
Ollerton went on to win a fifth Victorian title and a second Coach of the Year award before his final stint the helm of Green Gully in 2010, where he once again coached Mile Medjedovic , one of the Heidelberg heroes of 2001.
And into season 2026 Alexander are the defending Victorian champions..
