The Gowan Twins & Central District Dominated The SANFL In The Early 2000s

They've won the grand final in emphatic style. You beauty! The Gowans boys were brilliant. Absolutely unbelievable game by them. So Chris, in a nutshell, he looks the same, but we're completely different. Aren’t we? Yeah we are. You are ugly. You’re ugly. Chris is about eight kilos heavier, come out first. We call him the womb hog. He's my best friend. You know, we still live together. I was a midfielder more of a midfielder runner and Chris was more of a goal kicker. You can see by the stats he was a hog. And he's very, very happy about it. He used to kick all the goals and I used to give them off. The Jack Oatey Medallist for 2000 is number 28, James Gowans. The major difference is James’ got a higher inflated opinion of himself. He's had the footy for a fortnight James Gowans. He was the man, he played four games of AFL dominated there. I just sort of hung on for the ride you know. Nah, we’ve done alright. He has drilled it. Hey, how are ya? Hey mate. I was born first, I was 8 minutes earlier. Born in the Western General Hospital at Footscray. So we come out red, white and blue. Great kick Billy! We did well, we grew up in Sunshine, but we called it Scumshine. Growing up as kids we always like wanted to play AFL footy that was our dream. Everyone we knew was the same. We loved it. We loved footy didn’t we? Yeah we did. You’d go to footy Saturday, play Sunday juniors. We used to play at Sunshine Heights and the reason we only went to Sunshine Heights is because we drove around all the western suburbs looking for some team that wore red, white and blue. That's how much we love Footscray and we decided at 21 to have a crack a bit, so we went and played VFL for Werribee and then we got lucky enough to get rookie listed to St Kilda in ‘99. James played four games and did all right. I remember Tim Watson reckoned he was going to play 200. That was after his first but then after his fourth, he was back down to the Two’s! It was the story of our life wasn’t it really. Oh it was. So we had decided to leave St Kilda and then we were trying to get back on an AFL list and then the phone rang and mum picked up the phone and she said Hello Alison Gowans, she said G’day Alison this is Chris Grant from the Bulldogs and we thought, wow, Chris Grant our idol played for Footscray is ringing us. Like I was thinking I did okay in those four games but to get the captain of the club. The captain to ring. He said it's Chris Grant from the Central District’s Bulldogs. I said, oh, where’s that? And anyway he had to tell us it was in Adelaide, South Australia and anyway instantly deflated. We wouldn't mind getting you over for a training session. So we come. Stewie Dew was, he's a legend of the club here. Also a legend in the AFL he took us out that night after training and the rest is history, we stayed. And there it is. Another one for the Doggies. We ended up staying, playing SANFL for 16 years. Played every year bar our last year in a grand final. So we're very lucky, won nine of them. A SANFL record. We played in 12 grand finals in a row. Won nine of them like it will never be seen again. We were so lucky that we were part of a great club and a great culture and we fitted in. It's working class, it’s just like Sunshine, red, white and blue bulldogs. Yeah it was meant to be I think. We combined for 600 and whatever goals and the split is Chris with a few more because he was hungry he's like Kevin Bartlett. I think if I played 246 I kicked more than two a game. So that's 400. You didn’t get 400. James, I reckon I kicked 300 more than you. No you didn’t.