Chocolate and the yellow and black: How Jill became a Tigers legend

In partnership with Toyota

For almost 70 years, the Queanbeyan Tigers have possessed an unlikely secret weapon.

Not a burly full forward who towers over opposition defenders and kicks bags of goals per week, but an 82-year-old pocket rocket standing less than five feet tall who has been the one constant at Tigerland since the 1950s.

Jill Bright still runs an under-the-table scheme for the club's forwards, a system she hatched a generation ago while operating the now defunct manual scoreboard.

"It started off with Paul Williams, if he kicked five goals he'd get a block of chocolate," Bright said.

"Actually before that it was Adrian White, he kicked 100 in a season for ressies but he took it in beers. He saved them up until after the grand final.

"Swanny (Andrew Swan) was the last one on the chocolate plan, he used to get caramellos."

Bright's initiative has worked wonders. The Tigers have won 13 first-grade premierships while she's been at the club (14 if you include the abandoned 2021 season where they finished on top), while seven of Queanbeyan's nine reserve grade flags have come under her watch.

It was the late 1950s when she was first convinced by a friend to watch the Tigers play, while they were still based at Town Park.

Bright quickly took up collection duty, which in those days meant walking around among the spectators, filling a blanket with cash to cover the entry fee.

When they moved down to Margaret Donohoe Oval in Karabar, Bright took charge of the historic scoreboard, and every match day up until 2012 could be found in a little tin shed on the far side of the ground manually adjusting numbered panels as goals were kicked and chocolate prizes were secured.

In time she was joined by her daughter Nicole. The pair were able to move over to the grandstand side in 2012 when the club secured an electronic scoreboard.

"It made life a lot easier," Bright said.

"There were no longer big panels to pull down, sometimes the wind used to come in and blow those panels off - geez it can get cold in the wintertime.

"It was hard for me to do [switch sides], because all of a sudden the game was back to front. It was like looking into a mirror."

Bright's duties extend far beyond the scoreboard, and bribing club forwards.

Her and Nicole are avid scrapbookers, and every word written about the Tigers for the last 50 years can be found in bounded books at the clubhouse.

She's a long-time sponsor, runs raffles for the junior teams and every time a new baby is born to the club, Bright knits them a pair of yellow and black socks.

Bright was the first female to be inducted in the Tigers' Walk of Fame, and her photograph sits proudly inside the licensed club. The club's senior women's best and first trophy also bears her name.

Then there's her own yellow and black scarf, which rarely leaves her neck. "If I haven't got the scarf on, they don't win," Bright said.

"One day I was out at Belconnen and I didn't have the scarf on, we were losing. I went and got the scarf out of the bag and put it on, and we won. You've got to wear it."

To find out more, head to Toyota's Good for Footy webpage.