By Tallon Smith

This is Battlers For Bush Footy’s 100th article since we launched our website in November last year!

To celebrate this occasion, we’re taking a look at 10 towns and regions that need our great game rugby league to return to their local sporting fields. So, without further ado, here they are!

10. Quirindi (NSW)

By far and away the largest town in NSW north of the Murrumbidgee without a rugby league side, Quirindi leaves a large gap on the rugby league map between the fertile nurseries of Group 21 in the Hunter Valley and Group 4 in the North West. Home to 3,444 people, the town last accommodated a senior rugby league team in 2015, when the Quirindi Grasshoppers played their final season in the Group 4 competition. Although most local rugby league fans still have a team to play for in the form of the Werris Creek Magpies just up the road, the fact that this historic rugby league town no longer has a team bearing its name is a big loss to rugby league in the district. Hopefully one day we’ll see the ‘Hoppers jump back into Group 4 and return Quirindi to their place in the great game of rugby league.

9. Deniliquin (NSW)

Situated in the south-western corner of the state less than an hour’s drive from the Victorian border, Deniliquin is influenced by both states’ culture. This reflects in their footballing teams, which include two Victorian Rules clubs and a rugby union side. However, the town remains missing from the rugby league map, and apart from a brief period in the 2000s when the Deniliquin Raiders entered Victoria’s Goulburn Murray Rugby League, this is the way it has been since the town’s original side, the Deniliquin Blue Heelers folded in the mid 1970s. With a population of 6,833, ‘Deni’ is the largest town in the state without a rugby league team. However, there is a renewed push to bring the game back to the town in the next few years, so hopefully the Blue Heelers will be gracing the paddock in the near future.

8. Ballarat [and Bendigo] (Victoria)

Although it may seem a curious addition to this list, Ballarat is not as foreign to rugby league as one might think. The Victorian city has hosted three clubs in its rugby league history, with the Ballarat Highlanders (an arm of the Rugby Union club), Ballarat Dragons and the Wendouree Raiders competing within the Melbourne Rugby League and the now defunct Central Highlands Rugby League respectively at different stages. However, despite being the centre of the CHRL in the 2000s, the competition abruptly came to a halt in 2008 due to a range of factors, and has not re-formed in the fifteen years since. Given that rugby league is extremely pocketed in regional Victoria, with clubs only in a handful of cities in the North East (Benalla, Wangaratta and Wodonga), North West (Mildura and Robinvale) and South West (Warrnambool and Stawell), placing a team strategically in the Centre of the state would have enormous benefits and create potential for even a league to be re-started in the Central Highlands, allowing rugby league to spread to nearby towns such as Bendigo and Ararat. Hopefully NRL Victoria are seeing the benefits we are.

7. Spencer Gulf (South Australia)

Once home to a burgeoning league of four teams, the Spencer Gulf in SA is one area in which a lot of progress for the game has been lost. The competition, which featured teams from Port Pirie, Port Augusta, Roxby Downs and Whyalla, the last town of which actually hosted an NRL game in 1998, vanished in the late 2010s. Given that the game is no longer played west of Adelaide within South Australia, the re-establishment of this competition is an absolute necessity if the NRL is keen to grow the sport within the state.

6. Shepparton (Victoria)

Although it may seem unfamiliar territory for the sport to be exploring, there is quite a lot of merit to the idea of Shepparton hosting a rugby league side once again. Nestled close to the geographic centre of Victoria, Shepparton is the focus of a large irrigated farming district on the Goulburn River, similar to Griffith in New South Wales. The town has had a team previously, with the Shepparton Warriors playing in the Goulburn Murray Rugby League in the mid 2000s, before that competition folded in 2009 (it was subsequently resurrected in 2014). There are currently efforts being undertaken by NRL Victoria in re-establishing the sport in the area, with community forums and events being held just these past few months. So in regards to rugby league in Shepparton, watch this space.

5. Trangie [and Warren] (NSW)

A proud and historic rugby league town, Trangie is perhaps most famous for producing former Canberra Raiders and Sydney Roosters winger Justin Carney. However, the town’s rugby league team, the Magpies, folded in 2022, in a massive blow for the local community. This followed the loss of the Bulldogs in neighbouring Warren a few years prior. If common sense prevails, it would be great to see the two towns put their rivalries aside and form a combined Trangie-Warren team to compete in the Castlereagh Rugby League competition at some stage in the future.

4. Wee Waa (NSW)

The home town of Parramatta, Manly and New South Wales legend Jamie Lyon, and colloquially known as the ‘Cotton Capital’ this proud rugby league town has not been represented in senior rugby league competitions for over five years. The second former Group 4 side on this list, the Wee Waa Panthers last won a premiership in 2004, and played in a Grand Final as recently as 2010. Although the town’s relative proximity to Narrabri may hinder a return to the field, its population of 2,080 is more than enough for a self-sustaining football team, leaving us with one crucial question; when will the mighty Wee Waa Panthers roar once more?

3. Charleville (Queensland)

Situated nine hours drive west of Brisbane in South Western Queensland, the town of Charleville has been a rugby league stronghold. The home town of former Maroon Adrian Vowles, the Charleville Comets formerly played in the Western Rugby league along with Quilpie, Augathella and Cunnamulla. After the former two sides were unable to form teams in 2019, after a season of playing matches against one another, the Comets and the Cunnamulla Rams decided to merge and play in the Roma District competition from 2021. However, with a distance of 2 hours between the towns making training and team bonding difficult, and some away trips double that, the club ceased playing in 2023, and its future remains unclear. The two towns are now caught in a difficult situation, with three options, with these being to remain merged and re-join the league in Roma, each go it alone in the Roma competition (either in A Grade or Reserve Grade), or to return to playing each other in a two team Western Rugby League competition. 

2. Tumbarumba (NSW)

As a keen follower of Group 9, never did I ever think I’d be writing this. Tumbarumba, the original “Green Machine” (the nickname pre-dates the Raiders’ informal tag) were once one of the strongest clubs in the state. This was extremely evident in the 1980s, when the club won back-to-back Clayton Cups as the Country Rugby League team with the best record in 1985 and 1986. However, in 2017 the club left Group 9, and despite winning the Murray Cup in 2019 after 12 months in the wilderness, the club has failed to finish a men’s campaign since that title. After a full year of recess in 2022, the club’s wome’s team returned in 2023, under the oversight of new President Ray Lynch. There are plans underway for a return to the field in Men’s competition in 2024, which would be amazing for the town of 1800 people, who are hoping for a return to the golden days of Green Machine dominance.

1. Hobart (Tasmania)

Okay, I already know what you’re thinking. This bloke is crazy. Well, a little! But many people don’t know the rugby league history within Tasmania’s capital. Rugby league was first played in Hobart in 1954, when a Tasmanian representative team defeated Victoria 18-8, and a domestic competition began that same season. In the 1990s, nine clubs contested a statewide competition called the Tasmanian Rugby League Premiership. After folding around the turn of the century, the competition was re-established in 2009 (an eerily similar timeframe to the folding and subsequent re-formation of the TSL Statewide Aussie Rules competition) with four clubs, Northern Suburbs, Hobart City Tigers, Southern Rabbitohs and Eastern Shore Thunder, all based in Hobart. Teams were also later added in Launceston and Burnie to re-establish a statewide presence. But, in 2015, the competition vanished, and there has been no competitive rugby league at any level since.

As the most popular sport in three states of the country, it should be extremely concerning for the NRL that the game doesn’t exist at all in another. The Storm have played two trials at North Hobart Oval in 2011 and 2017 respectively, but there have been no substantial centralised efforts to grow the game in the ‘Apple Isle’ in many years. The lockout from AAMI Park during this year’s Women’s FIFA World Cup would have provided a perfect opportunity for the Storm to take a game to Hobart, but the NRL instead scheduled games at Marvel Stadium. Even the announcement of an AFL team to be based in the city failed to draw a Tasmania-focused response from the NRL, with the expansion move instead countered by bizarre speculation surrounding the creation of a second NRL team in Melbourne. Basically we’ve heard rumours of everything except the actual re-establishment of the game within Tasmania. Thus, it seems that Tasmania has been well and truly left off the map at Rugby League Central in recent years, which in our opinion something that needs to be rectified in the future.

Honourable mentions:

Blackbutt-Yarraman (QLD), Lightning Ridge (NSW), Holbrook (NSW), Babinda (QLD), Malanda (QLD), Barraba (NSW), Warren (NSW), Bundarra (NSW), Holbrook (NSW), Braidwood (NSW), Cobargo-Bermagui (NSW).