In 1950 it was approached and agreed to field a team in the new Metropolitan Football League (MFL) whilst maintaining a side in the lower grades of the FDFL.

Upon its admission to the VFA, the club played its home games at Selwyn Park,[1] before moving to Skinner Reserve, Braybrook, in 1966.

This caused a dispute in 1963, when Waverley adopted Panthers as its nickname, and spent around £100 promoting it before discovering that Sunshine was already using the name.

Under captain-coach Don McKenzie, Sunshine defeated Brunswick by 54 points in the decider and earned promotion to Division One for the first time.

Sunshine fell to the bottom half of the Division 2 ladder in the late 1970s, and the early 1980s saw Sunshine endure one of the worst prolonged stretches of performances by a club in VFA history: from 1981 to 1984, the club won two wooden spoons and won only seven games.

The club improved dramatically in 1985 under coach Ron Brown, winning the Division 2 minor premiership in 1986[7] and reaching but losing Grand Finals in 1986 and 1988.