as well, often at the same time as a playing coach. One notable example of this, as far as the O&M was concerned, was Bob Rose, who left Collingwood as a player in 1955 and became captain coach of the Wangaratta Rovers and lead them to two premierships in 1958 and 1960, after which he returned to Collingwood to continue his coaching career. 1970s and 1980s In 1968, the VFL introduced country recruitment zones throughout Victoria and Riverina, which limited the areas from which each VFL club could recruit. The O&MFL was allocated to North Melbourne, and thus quite a few of the better players from the O&M came to play for the Kangaroos, contributing in part to that club's rise to success in the 1970s. These included Mick Nolan, Xavier Tanner, Gary Cowton, Peter Chisnall and John Byrne and later John Longmire, who had a good season with Corowa-Rutherglen as a goal kicking forward in O&M seniors in 1987. The zoning system was discontinued in the late 1980s as the VFL/AFL introduced a draft system. The Wangaratta Rovers dominated the 1970's, playing in ten grand finals between 1970 and 1980, winning seven premierships and finishing third in 1973. In 1974 the O&MFL was disaffiliated by the Victorian Country Football League (VCFL) when the O&MFL refused to accept an application from the Lavington Football Club to join the league. By this stage the football club was based at the Lavington Sports Club, an established licensed club, and was strong enough to field teams in both the Tallangatta League and Hume Football League the following year. The makeup of the competition remained stable until 1979, when Corowa and Rutherglen merged into Corowa-Rutherglen, and the Lavington Football Club was finally admitted from the Farrer Football League, so the number of clubs remained at ten. Lavington's home ground, the Lavington Sports Club Oval, provided an ideal venue for many sports as the sports club gradually developed it after its construction in the 1970s. The league has designated it as the venue for most of the league's grand finals since the 1980s. Recently, added assistance for the staging of the grand final through regional promotion and in-kind sponsorship has been provided by the Albury City Council. In 1983, after an unsuccessful debut season playing for Hawthorn the previous year, Gary Ablett played for Myrtleford in the O&M for a year, before he was recruited