By Marcus Uhe
The Narre Warren Football Netball Club has a tradition that sees new members added to the club’s Hall of Fame once a decade.
In July this year, the likes of Michael Collins, Chris Toner, and Michelle Mashado had their names added to the club’s honour board, representing some of the biggest contributors and most successful figures to represent the black and white.
By the time 2034’s comes around, expect the name Kurt Mutimer to be front-and-centre when it comes to potential additions, having put together a dominant three years since joining the club in 2022.
Mutimer has won all three best-and-fairests, including two in premiership years, solidifying his status as an all-time great at Kalora Park.
The second in a premiership-winning year, in 2024, capped a stellar season in which he finished in the top 10 of Outer East Football Netball’s Smith Ramage Medal count as the best player in the Premier Division, and was named in the Team of the Year.
“In a way, it’s not just yourself that wins a premiership but I couldn’t be happier to be named the best-and-fairest, especially those two years where we won the premiership,” Mutimer said.
“But I wouldn’t win those best-and-fairests if it wasn’t for the blokes that I play with and the blokes I play around.”
Mutimer’s football journey personifies the reality that most AFL careers don’t finish in fairytale fashion with retirement laps around the MCG on grand final day.
Delisted by West Coast after four seasons in Perth at the end of 2019, Mutimer was unable to prove that he still had more to give as football became exclusively a professional sport in 2020 due to Covid-19.
Mutimer had signed to play at the Casey Demons in the VFL but never got the chance that year and eventually followed his brothers, Jacob and Dylan, to Kalora Park in an effort to repair his relationship with football, which he concedes had “fluctuated”.
He described that period as a “challenging time”, leading to difficult conversations about what to do with his future.
“That year when Covid-19 hit and there was no footy, that was probably the toughest part,” he said of his return to Melbourne.
“Coming straight off an AFL list to not playing footy for 12 months, really made it difficult and really tested what I wanted to do, footy-wise, especially at the end of those 12 months.
“It’s probably half the reason why I went back to Narre Warren; the rigours of footy at AFL level can really take a toll on you.
“I think it’s getting back to your roots and trying to enjoy football again, where you don’t have the pressures of performing every week – you can just go out there, perform with your mates and go back to enjoying footy just like you did when you were 13, 14-years-old running around in the juniors.
“Coming through as a junior, all you wanted to do was just play football and you don’t think about too much, bar that.
“Going back to football now and playing at Narre Warren, those days feel like going back to your juniors again and you just go back to playing football.”
A Narre North Fox junior, the prospect of leaving the Magpies never crossed his mind when offers came and teammates departed during the tumultuous 2023 offseason, eager to lead the next crop of emerging Magpies including his brothers, Jacob and Dylan, and remain in the club’s infrastructure, where his partner, Kimberly, coaches the C-Grade netball side.
The uncompromising inside midfielder leads by example, setting the tone on the training track every Tuesday and Thursday night with his intensity and physicality, a trait that rubbed off on his teammates on their way to premiership success.
In 2025, fresh challenges await Narre Warren as its takes its programs to the Southern Football Netball League.
Old rivalries with Cranbourne and Dingley will be rekindled, while new contests against some of the most prominent local footballers of the last decade, in Kyle Martin and Jackson Sketcher, await when Springvale Districts comes to town.
It’s a prospect that excites Mutimer, likely to find himself standing one of the aforementioned pair at stoppages.
“Going over there and you’ve got superstar players like (Sketcher) and (Martin), it makes teams want to join the league and test their teams against the better teams in Southern,” he said.
“It should be a big challenge for us but I think we’re really capable of going over there and really challenging a lot of those teams that did well this year, like Cheltenham, Dingley and Cranbourne.”
