The Hawks Museum is pleased to announce that after 23 years of searching, the Club now has a set of Membership Tickets from 1925 through to 2013.
The museum recently received a membership ticket from 1926 that completes the 89 years that Hawthorn has been a member of the VFL/AFL.
Listed inside the 1926 ticket we learn that, J W Kennon was President, there were five Vice-Presidents with a Committee of ten members. The fixture lists the season’s games, practice matches and the interstate games.
You could attend 22 games with your membership ticket and being a member you were entitled to vote at the Annual Meeting by showing your ticket.
The evolution of the Club’s membership has changed many times through the years.
From 1925-1959, tickets were made from thick cardboard covered in brown leatherette commonly used in bookbinding with the ticket folding in half and opening like a book. On the left hand side Club details and contact addresses were spelt out and on the right hand side the fixture with the games were listed in numerical order. On the cover of the ticket, embossed in gold were the HFC initials with a Club flag featured until the Hawk logo was introduced in 1948.
When the Club member attended the football, the membership ticket was presented at the turnstiles where the tickets were punched for admittance to the game.
In 1960, the Club used a thinner white cardboard for the membership ticket retaining the same format inside. The same design was retained for the next 18 years with the flying Hawk logo printed in brown on a gold background on the front covers.
In 1978 the size of the ticket was reduced with the colours reversed, a gold Hawk on a brown background.
The 1926 membership card.
Come 1979, the membership was redesigned to a smaller size with a gloss finish and featured a coloured photo of the player who won the previous year’s Best & Fairest award on the cover.
Peter Knights featured in 1979 followed by Kel Moore 1980 and Leigh Matthews 1981.
In 1982 the Club ran a competition for a new Hawk logo with the winning design to be featured on the membership ticket. The competition was won by Velda (surname unknown) an art student from Swinburne Institute of Technology.
This popular logo of a stylised head of a Hawk was featured on the membership ticket until 1992 when photographs of players were re-introduced in 1993.
Since then the ticket has continue to feature such players as Shane Crawford and Sam Mitchell before reverting back to the Hawks logo in 2008, when the present day Hawks logo was first introduced.
The plastic credit card was adopted in 1989.
These plastic cards were initially presented at the turnstiles where they were punched for entry until 1999 when the swipe technique was introduced.
Come 2013 the Club member can now choose from six different player images for their ticket with their name, number of years a member and your seat number printed on the reverse.
The Membership Ticket exhibit is extremely popular with visitors and collectors of Hawk memorabilia. The Club Collection has only two tickets from our VFA years 1923 and 1924. Our goal is to have a team photo, an annual report and a membership ticket from 1902 on when the Club was first formed.
