By Tallon Smith

It may not be spreading like wildfire into non-traditional territory as Aussie Rules has done across regional New South Wales in recent years, but rugby league has made another massive stride in Victoria with the formation of a club in Bendigo.

The gold mining city of 100,000 people previously had a team, the Bendigo Tigers, which last competed in 2011, though records of this club are scarce and the sport fizzled out for over a decade.

Now, sparked by a post about the former Tigers on Battlers For Bush Footy’s Facebook page and a passion for the game, Bendigo rugby league fan Mikey Dynon, in conjunction with NRL Victoria, has re-launched the 13-man code in the Central Victorian city, with a club formed and ready to kick off in 2025.

Dynon said that things are moving quite quickly, with an AGM already held and a committee working towards the goal of getting the team on the paddock.

“We’ve become an incorporated organisation, and we’ve got a five-man committee at this stage,” he said.

“We’ve agreed we’re happy to go up to seven at some point.

“We’ve been working on things, we’re developing a sponsorship package to try and get sponsors on board. 

“We’ve worked out what our jerseys will look like, our nickname, and we’re also getting some polos made up just for committee members to wear when they go out to talk to sponsors. 

“So things are moving along.” 

One move Dynon has made to reduce the burden on volunteers and the need for separate committees is to have one club encompassing all rugby league activities, from Under 6s right through to Senior Men’s and Women’s footy.

“On the field, we have made the decision that we want to be just one club, not split between seniors and juniors,” he said.

“Just talking about a lot of Aussie rules clubs around here, they talk about there’s not a connection between the seniors and the juniors. 

“So that’s why we thought let’s make us just one club, incorporated in men’s, women’s, seniors, juniors, and hopefully full contact and league tag. 

“Things are progressing well and we’re hoping for a spring 2025 start as far as playing.”

As for which competition the new team will play in, that is yet to be decided, but Dynon said the preference was for a new country competition in the region rather than joining either the Melbourne or Wodonga based competitions, the only two in the state.

“That’s what we’re in talks with NRL Victoria about at the moment,” he said. 

“We were offered to join the Goulburn Murray comp, that was an option.

“To start with, we’ll have a lot of players that will be playing both league and union, that’s why we’ve looked at a spring comp, because we want to have a good relationship with the Bendigo Miners, our union team.

“We don’t want to be stealing their players and them struggling to field a team and maybe us struggling as well. 

“We did say to them, would it work to play a league or league on Sundays, union Saturdays, but the players I spoke to said that it would be a bit too tough on the body. 

“So we’re looking at a spring comp to start with and then look down the track. 

“I’d love to see a revitalization of the old Central Highlands comp, [you could] call it the Goldfields comp or something like that, and hopefully Ballarat can have a team and maybe Stawell and a few others.”

In terms of the club’s identity, Dynon said that they let the community pick one of four Bendigo-specific names that tie in with the region’s history, while the team will wear the city’s traditional sporting colours.

“We let the community vote on that because they also voted on our jersey because we really want to be a community focused club,” he said.

“Obviously, league’s not the number one game in town, so it’s much more important for us even than the Aussie rules clubs.

“It involves the community as much as possible and make it their team so they feel a part of it 

“So we got them to vote for names for the club and we got it down to four; there was ‘Blue Tongues’, ‘Bears’, ‘Crushers’ and ‘Nuggets’.

“Crushers came out well ahead and so we’ve gone with the Bendigo Crushers which sort of links [not only] to rugby league, but also links to Bendigo’s gold heritage as well.

“Bendigo sporting colours traditionally are blue and gold so we’ve gone with that with just a little bit of a twist, we’ve added a little bit of black into our jerseys as well.”