Club Spotlight: Return of the Orara Valley Axemen

By Tallon Smith

Up in the Orara Valley surrounding the famous North Coast city of Coffs Harbour is the small town of Coramba.

A lesser known location on the ‘Banana Coast,’ the village of just over 800 people is located 15 minutes from the city centre, and is home to the Orara Valley Axemen rugby league club.

Famously supported by Hollywood A-Lister Russell Crowe, and coached last year by Souths’ 2014 Clive Churchill Medal Winner and England representative Sam Burgess, the side has produced NRL quality talent, most notably in the form of Warriors Five-Eighth Luke Metcalf.

After making the Grand Final in 2022, where they lost 36-8 to South Grafton, the club entered recess across all four senior grades in 2023, something that was covered by Battlers For Bush Footy back in February.

However, with some new faces on the committee taking over from the previous hard-working volunteers, the club is aiming to re-enter the Group 2 competition in 2024.

Club President Stevan Cetinich said that the Axemen’s return plans are looking promising after some hard work over the off-season.

“We’re really excited about 2024, we’ve been working pretty hard this year,” he said.

“After the success of last year making the Group 2 Grand Final and then having to withdraw from the competition this year was a pretty tough pill to swallow.

“So we’ve been working really hard as our new young, energised executive throughout this year to try and rebuild the club and probably doing it more long term, sort of for sustainability of the club long term.”

Cetinich spoke of the major coup the club made on the coaching front, with the highly respected Ken Kerr set to take the reins in 2024.

“We’ve made some good connections, and we’ve managed to find ourselves a good coach and an experienced coach in Ken Kerr,” he said. 

“He’s spent a bit of time playing professionally over in the UK as well as coaching all around the world, [he] coached over in the United States at one point as well, so it’s been pretty exciting having him on board.”

Perhaps the aspect Cetinich is most excited about however is the likelihood that the club will field an Under 18s squad in 2024.

“For the first time in many years, it actually looks like we will have an Under 18s side, which is something we’ve lacked for probably ten years or something like that, so we’re pretty stoked about that,” he said.

“One of the requirements for us to be sustainable long term is to have an Under 18s side.

“Now we have some juniors who have come through the ranks, and because [in] the older [age groups] we didn’t have enough to have a side, they kind of filtered out to the other clubs, but we’ve been in communication with a number of those junior players from our club, and they’ve all indicated that they want to come back out to Orara.

“There’s still a fair bit of work to do to completely fill the numbers, but as early on in the piece as it is now, I think it’s showing some pretty promising signs there for next year.”

In terms of the community impact, Cetinich believes that the Orara Valley needs rugby league to return.

“The Orara Valley loves football,” he said.

“The whole community loves footy out there, and we tend to get pretty healthy crowds, I think we’ve got a pretty good supporter base.

“I’m really looking forward to what we can give back to the community as well, because without that community support there’s no support in doing it.”

After hosting a 40 year reunion for all past players, which included the inaugural 1983 team, as well as the 1994, 1997 and 2008 premiership teams this past weekend, footy is again the talk of the town in Coramba.

And if all goes to plan, the Axemen will kick off their 2024 campaign next April, ending the club’s recess and bringing football back to the Orara Valley.