SPORT: Trinity v Ormond - the rivalry has existed from the beginning

As the first two colleges of the University of Melbourne, Trinity and Ormond have had their fair share of rivalry from the get-go, especially on the sporting field.

BY DR BENJAMIN THOMAS

‘This afternoon the young oarsmen of the Trinity and Ormond Colleges will meet in friendly rivalry for the eighth time. An annual four-oared race was started between the two colleges in 1881 … With the exception of last year’s race the Trinity College crews have been victorious on each occasion,’ wrote the Leader in May 1888.

For almost the entirety of its first decade, Trinity College remained the single residential college affiliated with the University of Melbourne, holding sway over the sprawling paddocks and dotted manna gums that extended away to its north. Something of a curiosity, this neo-Gothic pile of Tasmanian sandstone was left to its own devices, standing in isolation among the unkempt grasses. As Theyre à Beckett Weigall (TC 1875) later recalled, ‘In our time we knew no fear of Ormond. Like the Spanish fleet, it was not yet in sight.’ That all changed in 1881.

Rowing final between Ormond and Trinity on the Yarra in 1932

On 26 May that year, an adversary presented itself on the waters of the Yarra in the form of a crew from the neighbouring Ormond College, which had officially opened only eight weeks earlier. The two colleges almost immediately took to the river in friendly competitiveness.

An intercollegiate football match followed two months later, held at the East Melbourne cricket ground. Having bested Ormond on the river, it was a bitter defeat for Trinity; at 2 goals, 11 behinds to a single goal, 4 behinds, the older college had to swallow its pride, surpassed by the recent arrivals around the college crescent.

In 1886, a 150-yard ‘College Race’ was established and opened to members of the two colleges, the prize to be awarded by Trinity’s Warden, Dr Alexander Leeper. It was won by Ormondian Albert Coulson.

More than a century later, when Ormond reacquired this early piece of sporting memorabilia after it had somehow made its way over the fence to Trinity, they could not help but quip, ‘it can only be hoped that Dr Leeper, in handing over this beautiful little trophy, parted with it in good grace!’

Intercollegiate rivalry across these founding decades was undoubtedly formative in shaping the two institutions’ relationship.

Trinity v Ormond women’s rugby match in 2021

Still, the student community approached such intercollegiate competitiveness warmly. When Trinity lost the football in 1907, a gracious Fleur de Lys extended the College’s congratulations to ‘Ormond on their victory, and we recognise that their team is the best team that ever played in intercollegiate football contests’. Or the following year, when Trinity students attended the Ormond College dance held at the St Kilda Hall; the occasion was declared 'a great success by the many Trinity men who were present'.

Enmity in sports did not diminish cordial, and indeed warmly hospitable, relations between the two student communities at a social level.

And not just among students.

The late Governor of Victoria, the Revd Dr Davis McCaughey, recounted arriving in Melbourne in 1953 with his large family to take up residence in the grounds of Ormond, during Ron Cowan’s wardenship of Trinity. He recalled ‘the warmth of welcome and kindliness with which we were greeted by the Cowan family.’

When McCaughey was appointed Master of Ormond six years later, Cowan became his mentor. ‘I knew – and I think other Heads of Colleges knew – that I had only to pick up the telephone to ask his advice and be given wise if sometimes disconcerting counsel.’

All the same, the sports field has remained the field of battle. For more than a century, the Fleur de Lys has reported on the intercollegiate sporting results either with enthusiasm or grim determination to settle scores the following year. And the reverse can equally be said on Ormond’s side.

Trinity v Ormond football match 1903

In 1990, the captain of Trinity’s All-Stars football team spoke of the match against Ormond, ‘the arch-enemy’. The current Anglican Dean of Melbourne, in his time as College Chaplain, recalls one College alumnus reflecting on the 2010 victory against Ormond in the rugby final as, ‘A clear victory of Anglicanism over the scheming Calvinists!’ While in 2014, having narrowly beaten St Hilda’s in Women’s AFL, Ormond looked ahead to ‘the final grudge match against Trinity’, who had beaten them the previous two years running by a single point. The motivation to settle the score carried Ormond over the line, 28-0 in their favour.

Sports-field determination has at times spilt across the fences. When Trinity’s seeing-eye dog in training, Urchin, had a chance encounter in 2020 with Master of Ormond College Lara McKay’s own pooch, Reggie, Ormond surmised the two canines were ‘holding peace talks’.

They were a year too early.

In the dead of night in mid-2021, a group of Ormondians jumped the fence to make off with artist Pamela Irving’s commissioned bronze sculpture, Bulpadock Bull (1993). Given a late-night tour of the University campus, it was subsequently returned home and left, somewhat unceremoniously, next to the hole from which it had been unearthed hours earlier.

Was it retaliatory then that, having claimed victory in the rowing in our 150th year, the Trinity crew brazenly marched into Ormond’s Dining Hall unannounced to carry away the Mervyn Bourne Higgins trophy to its rightful side of the fence before the official handover took place?

In spite of it all, Davis McCaughey said it best when he reflected that the ‘Colleges of the University have been strong when they have stood together. They have been happy when, inside the healthy rivalry, they have helped each other.’

One thing remains certain: After 150 years of friendly competitiveness, the gauntlet has been thrown down.