Small town footy can teach you lessons about resilience, patience, finding your own future and belonging. Credit:Damian White "Sav roll?" I asked, suspecting it was hopeless. Sure enough, the girl in the window looked blank. "Hot dog, I mean." Hot dogs were something you only read about in American comics all those years ago. We had saveloys bobbing about in a great copper of boiling water at our footy Saturdays, the women of the club steaming as they fished them out with tongs, split bread rolls and handed over the tomato sauce bottle. Sav rolls. A few other things had changed over the half century since I'd spent winter Saturdays at this ground. The club itself, for starters. It had become the Heywood Football and Netball Club, and rejoiced in the rather grand name Lions.

By embracing the district's netballers and having them play on match days, footy clubs now draw bigger crowds and families feel properly included. Credit:Damian White Our old team was known, a bit humbly, as the 'Woods, and it was strictly football. The scent of Juicy Fruit chewing gum and eucalyptus rubbing oil and testosterone billowed from the training sheds. No one had been smart enough then to figure that if your club embraced the district's netballers and have them play on match days you'd get bigger crowds and everyone would feel properly included. Changing times have seen the 'Woods become the Heywood Football and Netball Club, which rejoices in the rather grand name Lions. Credit:Damian White Back then, we were accustomed to brave losses.

The last flag for the 'Woods had been in 1954. There'd been no more through the '50s and it got worse in 1964 when the club moved from the Western District Football League to the stronger Western Border League, which spread across the Victorian border to south-east South Australia. There would be no flag for Heywood through the 1960s, and there would be none for the '70s, the '80s, the '90s or the first decade of the 21st century, either. Truth was, Heywood, a town of 1300, was playing out of its league. We felt proud of it. All those losses. Us against the world. I found a bench by the fence to eat my hot dog. I could hardly expect to recognise many in the crowd, I felt. Been away too long, though I'd been born in the little old bush nursing hospital down by the river. The reserves were playing out their last quarter, solid steak-fed country boys thundering across the paddock.

And Heywood, glory be, were killing 'em. They were playing a team called Branxholme-Wallacedale. The final score was embarrassing: 206-38. Heywood, it turned out, had switched leagues again. They'd stepped down to the South West District Football Network League and no longer had to play cashed up teams from big places like Hamilton and Mt Gambier and Portland. Little Heywood was suddenly a large fish in a big pond. Playing teams from tiny towns and farming districts, they won the senior flag in 2012 and 2015 and haven't lost a game this year. The reserves were premiers in 2014. All grades of the netball teams had won a scad of premierships going back to the 1990s. Branxholme and Wallacedale were so sparsely populated they had to merge their footy teams to create a single competitive club. The same thing has been happening across rural Victoria for years as village populations fall away, young people head off for the city and footy and netball teams that had once been fierce rivals are forced to merge to stave off closure. As I sat there consuming my hot dog, Heywood reserves flogging Branxholme-Wallacedale, a voice offered a greeting.

Sitting alongside was an elegant woman whose family goes back a few thousand years further than mine in this area. Laura Bell is a Gunditjmara woman, raised on the old Lake Condah Mission out in the lava stones of Bunj Bim, a place marked out as Australia's latest candidate for UNESCO World Heritage listing. She knows her footy. She's been attending Heywood games all her life. Laura was born a Lovett, and her brothers Jack, Billy and Wally Lovett all played for Heywood. They remain in my memory magicians. Footy, for Indigenous families like the Lovetts, was for a century about the one way to gain recognition in country towns. Laura knows in her bones the importance of the game, way beyond whether your team won or not. It made her people visible. "Any more of your family playing these days, Laura?" I inquired innocently.

Well, yes. There were three of her grandchildren and several nephews running out with the seniors, she said, keeping a practised eye on the opening moments of the afternoon's main game. Branxholme-Wallacedale kicked two fast goals. "Hmm," said Mrs Bell. "They're out to make a statement." It didn't last long. Heywood, once playing out of their league but never capitulating, ended up running their opponents off their feet, winning 124-35. Purple clouds had rolled in by then, promising a storm, and I rode away seeking shelter, wondering why I had not attended a footy match in the town of my birth for so long. There were lessons there, about resilience and patience and finding your own future. And belonging.