Our Story

Established in 1985, BJFC strive to provide and maintain the best possible environment for children and youths in our community to learn our national sport of Australian Rules Football, with enjoyment both on and off the footy oval. With the assistance of our many valuable sponsors to our club, dedicated coaching staffs for all teams and hard working Committee members, each year we have managed to achieve this goal.

In what was a fast developing suburb Ballajura JFC starting out with a Committee of 5 people and a team of under 9’s and joined East Perth Junior Competition. Every year after, the club grew in leaps and bounds to be today, over 550 players strong, including on average each year approximately 150 6 to 8 year old Auskick players.

The club colours of blue and black were adopted largely due to a lack of funds in the inaugural year. A club from south of the river kindly offered Ballajura a complete set of jumpers and, as they were identical to the East Perth strip, being our parent WAFL club, permission was sought and our club was duly granted to use their colours. At the same time the name “BALLAJURA BRAVES” was also introduced which, at the time was suitable for a team of 9 year olds. However, it was not long before we were fielding teams up to and including under 17’s, so in 1993 the Committee found it more fitting to adopt the name “BALLAJURA ROYALS”. Our club logo was also changed from a red indian to the shield as seen on all of our publications today.

After the introduction of a 9th WESTAR team in the 1997 season (Peel Thunder) the WA Football Commission promptly restructured the WESTAR boundaries from which the WAFL clubs draw their junior recruits. As a result of these changes, players who live in the Ballajura, Alexander Heights, Marangaroo and Landsdale areas, changed from East Perth to Subiaco FC.

In December 1988, after much deliberation with the committee of the club, BJFC took a giant step forward and bought a 48 seater bus. This has now allowed the club to expand our seasonal program for all areas of the club, from weekly beach trips in summer, pre-season camps, team trips to Mandurah, end of season camps, to the annual under 12’s visit to Kalgoorlie.

Our time under the Subiaco FC District was ‘short lived’, as the boundaries were again reviewed in 2003 returning Ballajura to the East Perth umbrella. However, even though Kalgoorlie remained with Subiaco district, this did not change our arrangement with the Goldfields JFA, all of our under 12’s still enjoy the home and away games and the long weekend trip to Kalgoorlie each year.

However, no matter how successful we were off the field, we always seemed to manage to miss out on winning a Premiership flag to add to our trophy cabinet. Every year, we had teams which made it through to final rounds end even in 2001 runners up. It was not until 2002 that our under 13’s, coached by Wayne Wirth brought the first flag home to Ballajura. The same team went on to win the Premiership in all but one of the following seasons through to under 17’s. Since then we have been successful almost every year.

Through the years the club has had many successful players making it through to Subiaco 13’s to 17’s combined squads also Colts and League levels. One familiar name from Ballajura can now be seen in the Dockers line up. Anthony Grover made his debut with the Dockers in 1999 season, also playing at centre half back for South Fremantle in the Grand Final against West Perth in the same year. Another Ballajura player Nathan Blee was drafted in 2012 following successful seasons with East Perth FC and is now playing for Port Power (Port Adelaide). Nathan is the first player to have spent his entire junior football with Ballajura to be drafted to play at AFL level.

We at Ballajura Junior Football Club are very proud of our achievements since that first team of under 9’s in 1985, and are confident in saying that Ballajura is the most social, ahead of all other clubs in providing off the ground facilities, a health safe environment and enjoyment for its members all of which without doubt makes Ballajurra the best Junior Football Club in the Northern Suburbs to be a member of.