Friends and family of Brain, who died in the early hours of Tuesday, have remembered her as a person of great courage who was dedicated to her community.

The Mininera and District Football League president attended the vote count at Lake Bolac on Monday and died overnight. She was 53.

The MDFL will celebrate her life with a minute’s silence before the grand final at Glenthompson on Saturday. Players in all grades will wear black armbands.

Brain, a farmer at Willaura, became involved with Moyston-Willaura in the early 2000s when her four children started playing football and netball.

She also played netball with the Pumas and was, at various stages, a netball coach, sports trainer and netball umpire before becoming club president in 2008.

Her first year in the role, which coincided with the AFL celebrating 150 years of football, showed a willingness to fight for her community. 

Before the celebrations, she called for recognition that the founding father of football, Tom Wills, devised the game while growing up at Moyston. Legend has it Wills spotted Aboriginal children playing marngrook with a possum-skin ball and used this as the foundation of football.

Yet the AFL rejected the Wills-Moyston-marngrook link. Melbourne historian Gillian Hibbins went as far as dismissing it as a “seductive myth”.

Moyston, feeling neglected but with its resolve in tact, held its own celebration a week later. Coaching legend Kevin Sheedy was among the guests.

“I know the coaches will address the players and tell them a bit about Tom Wills and how his spirit should live on in our teams,” Brain told The Standard in 2008.

Former Moyston-Willaura president Mick Davis said Brain was instrumental in helping transform the club during the mid-2000s.

Moyston and Willaura merged in 2000 and the combine was the league’s easybeat before Brain and then-coach Wilf Dickeson led a recovery.

“Even though we combined, there wasn’t great strength. Where we had the strength was socially, that was Ruth,” Davis said.

“She always believed if we were socially strong, that would eventually flow onto the footy field and the netball court. That’s exactly what’s happened.”

Brain spent three seasons as Pumas’ president. She took over as MDFL junior vice-president in 2011 before rising into the top job in 2012.

In doing so, she became the second female president of a bush football league behind Colleen Rogers, who took charge of the Loddon Valley league in 2011.

But Brain’s community involvement extended beyond Moyston-Willaura FNC and the MDFL.

She was on the Willaura Cricket Club committee and was one of the best golfers in the region, winning the Chalambar Golf Club championship five times.

AFL Victoria Western District commission general manager Lachy Patterson said Brain was “the first lady of the MDFL”.

“The thing about Ruth was the fact she had an infectious personality.   She was a bubbly, polite, enthusiastic person,” Patterson said.

“When you came to Mininera football, there was no one else on par with her. She’d do everything she could to make the league better.”

Patterson said Brain was a “trailblazer” who opened doors for females at MDFL clubs.

David Watson, who preceded Brain as MDFL president, agreed. Watson said Brain had done “a phenomenal job” as MDFL president.

“I think what she’s done for footy, a lot of other ladies would’ve seen that and it may have helped them put their hands up and volunteer for different jobs,” he said.

Brain is survived by her husband Lloyd and children James, Nick, Alex and Kaitlan.