Rugby union in Victoria describes the sport of rugby union being played and watched in the state of Victoria in Australia. The code was first introduced some time between the 1850s and 1880s but remained a minor sport played primarily in the private schools and amongst interstate expats. This has changed, particularly since the professionalisation of the game in the mid 1990s.
Player numbers are healthy for a sport in perhaps the most crowded football code marketplace on earth. Rugby Victoria counts participation across all variations of the game including 15-a-side Rugby, Sevens Rugby, VIVA 7s and Game-On primary school development program and claims that the game has grown by 38 per cent in 2016 to 15,829 participants.[citation needed] However Ausplay shows a decline of the sport in Victoria and with 11,792 registered players in 2022 trails behind Rugby union in Western Australia.[2]
There are over 25 Rugby clubs in Victoria at any one time, with age group and community rugby forming the largest portion. The top tier of clubs consisting of a mix of amateurs and professionally contracted players aligned with the Melbourne Rebels compete for the Dewar Shield.
Victoria has produced over 30 Wallabies and many more Super Rugby and Professional players and age group Australian players as well as internationals for a number of pacific island nations.
International rugby matches are popular with spectators in Victoria. This is evidenced by the large crowds which attended matches at the 2003 Rugby World Cup, 2006 Commonwealth Games, England v Australia game (2016) and overall television ratings for blockbuster internationals.
Writer Sean Fagan claims that Rugby football was first played in Victoria in the late 1840s and into the 1850s. While it is not known specifically which rules they played, the earliest recorded football clubs in Victoria, St Kilda Football Club (1858), South Yarra (1858), Scotch College, Melbourne, Melbourne Grammar and St Kilda Grammar did not originally play Australian rules football and are believed to have played English school games, quite possibly rugby. However, dissatisfaction with a lack of uniform rules and how the game was played led to the Melbourne FC in May 1859 adopting its own revised laws of football which was later to become known as Australian rules football. With the rapid rise in popularity of Australian rules football in Victoria, rugby quickly became a minority sport.
During the 1870s, Victorian clubs Albert Park and South Melbourne continued to experiment with rugby football rules. In May 1874, Albert Park, South Melbourne, and others had advocated strongly for their widespread adoption in Victoria,[3] however this did not meet favour with the more powerful clubs in the colony and the premier football matches, the Challenge Cup effectively banned use of the rugby rules by competing clubs.
Early intercolonials between Victoria and New South Wales were played in alternating codes. During the 1877 match between Waratah and Carlton, Victorian superstar George Coulthard switched codes and joined the Waratahs to play rugby in Sydney. He quickly dominated at the sport, scoring all five goals and four tries in his second and last game for the club.[4] Although he appeared in only two of the Waratahs' twelve rugby matches in 1877, Coulthard scored more goals than any other member that season, and tied equal first in tries.[5] Coulthard's effort in "[showing] the Rugby men how their game should be played" damaged the reputation of the rugby code in Victoria for decades.[6]
Victorian rugby went into recess between 1890 due to a lack of players. However competition restarted in 1893.[10]
Victoria vs England on the MCG in 1899
Victoria first played rugby football against New South Wales in Melbourne in 1894 and sent its first team to play in Sydney in 1895 but after 1889 the game more or less disappeared in the state except for the match played in Melbourne in 1899 against Great Britain in which the tourists defeated the Victorians 30-0.
A Victorian Rugby Union (VRU) was restored in 1908 as arrangements were being made for a Victorian team to play the first Wallabies in Melbourne just prior to their departure for Great Britain.
The next year, 1909 saw the first presentation of the Dewar Shield, an award for first grade premiership teams still retained. The clubs competing for the inaugural shield were the Melbourne Rugby Union Football Club and Melbourne University Rugby Football Club (both laying claim to being the oldest in Victoria), East Melbourne, South Melbourne.
Victoria and Kings School Paramatta contest a line-out on the MCG 1913
Competition lapsed on commencement of the First World War and was not revived until 1926 when five League clubs decided to convert to Union and form the current VRU.[11] During the following twelve years, up until the Second World War, Victoria played thirty matches against international and interstate teams and produced thirteen Wallabies. Club and representative competition did not resume again until 1946.
The first schoolboys match in Victoria was played in 1932 between Scotch College and Melbourne Grammar.[12]
Melbourne was selected as a venue for the 2003 Rugby World Cup including finals. The attendances were significant, with the highlights being 50,647 seeing Australia defeat Ireland and 50,647 for England versus Samoa.
Following the success of the Rugby World Cup, in 2004, the Victorian Rugby Union made a bid for a Super Rugby rugby union franchise. The bid had support from backers including the Victorian Government. However it was rejected by the Australian Rugby Union for a team in Perth which became the Western Force.[13]
Melbourne hosted the 2006 Commonwealth Games, which included a component of Rugby Sevens, of which all of the matches were sold out. Melbourne holds the current record attendance for Rugby Sevens.
The inaugural Australian Rugby Championship started August 2007, including eight teams, one of which based in Melbourne, Victoria. It was rumoured that the New South Wales Rugby Union (NSWRU) gave up a fourth club to enable Victoria to participate in the new national competition.[14] and the Melbourne Rebels were created and played out of Olympic Park Stadium. Despite having one of the larger crowd averages in the competition, they finished their first season with a home crowd average of just 3,305 and the league folded with losses in the millions, with the ARU openly blaming the Victorian franchise's larger costs of operation for the failure. The move was a great setback for the Victorian Rugby Union.
On 5 January 2010, it was announced by the Australian Rugby Union that it had awarded control of the new Melbourne Super Rugby team to the Melbourne Rebels consortium and that Melbourne would join the game's elite when the world's premier provincial competition expanded to 15 teams in 2011. The Melbourne Rebels played their first match of Super Rugby at AAMI Park against the NSW Waratahs on 18 February 2011, losing 43-0. The team only had to wait another week before registering their first victory, claiming a thrilling 25-24 win against the ACT Brumbies at AAMI Park in Round 2.
Known as the Victorian Rugby Union until late 2017, the governing body for rugby union in the state of Victoria is now Rugby Victoria. Victoria is a founding member of the national governing body, Rugby Australia.
Melbourne, Northern Panthers, Casey, Western Districts, Melbourne Uni, Powerhouse
Box Hill, Melbourne, Harlequins, Power House.
Melbourne, Box Hill, Melbourne Uni, Power House, Southern Districts, Harlequins, Barbarians, Maroondah.
These clubs in turn feed the Victorian state representative team, The Victorian Country (pre 2008), the Rebel Rising, a joint program between the Victorian Rugby Union and the Melbourne Rebels established in 2011.
Notable players
Victoria has produced a number of top-level rugby players including
Victoria has had a number of outstanding and successful rugby coaches including
Bruce Norton (Coached schoolboy, under age and seniors rugby for Victoria over three decades)
John McKee (rugby union coach) (Coached seniors rugby at Harlequins and for Victoria before taking up senior coaching roles interstate & internationally)
Mark Robinson (Coached seniors rugby at club Kiwi Hawthorn and Victoria senior Axemen coach in the Australian Rugby Shield runner up to ACT 2006 winners 2007 against South Australia)
The Queensland Reds is the rugby union team for the Australian state of Queensland that competes in the Southern Hemisphere's Super Rugby competition. Prior to 1996, they were a representative team selected from the rugby union club competitions in Queensland. With the introduction of the professional Super 12 competition they moved to a model where players are contracted to the Reds through the Queensland Rugby Union rather than selected on the basis of club form.
Rugby union in Australia has a history of organised competition dating back to the late 1860s. Although traditionally most popular in Australia's rugby football strongholds of New South Wales, Queensland and the ACT, it is played throughout the nation.
Roderick Ian Macqueen, AM is an Australian former rugby union coach. He coached Australia at the Rugby World Cup, and the Waratahs, Brumbies and Rebels in the Super Rugby competition.
Mark Gerrard is a former Australian professional rugby union footballer. He currently is the assistant coach for the Austin Gilgronis in Major League Rugby (MLR) competition in the United States. In 2011, he was one of 10 players nominated to become the competition's Super Rugby player of the year.
Julian Huxley is an Australian rugby union professional footballer. In 2008 he had established himself in the Wallabies and was named Australian Rookie of the Year. In 2011 he played for the Melbourne Rebels in the Super Rugby competition.
Adam Freier is a rugby union footballer. In 2011 and 2012 he played for the Rebels in the Super Rugby competition, and retired at the end of 2012 from professional rugby. In 2015 he came out of retirement to play Shute Shield for Randwick until this day. His usual playing position is hooker.
Digby Ioane is an Australian professional rugby union footballer who played for the Colorado Raptors in Major League Rugby (MLR).
Rugby Victoria, formerly the Victorian Rugby Union, is a member and founding union of Rugby Australia. Within the state of Victoria, it is the governing body for the sport of rugby union.
The Melbourne Rebels is an Australian professional rugby union team based in Melbourne with teams in the Super Rugby Pacific and Super Rugby Women's competitions. The Rebels made their debut in SANZAR's Super Rugby tournament in 2011. The club shares its name with a former Australian Rugby Championship team, but is unrelated. The team plays home matches at AAMI Park.
Ewen James Andrew McKenzie is an Australian professional rugby union coach and a former international rugby player. He played for Australia's World Cup winning team in 1991 and earned 51 caps for the Wallabies during his test career. McKenzie was head coach of the Australian team from 2013 to 2014. He has coached in both southern and northern hemispheres, in Super Rugby for the Waratahs and Reds, and in France at Top 14 side Stade Français. During his playing days he was a prop and, in a representative career spanning from 1987 to 1997, he played nine seasons for the NSW Waratahs and two for the ACT Brumbies.
Matthew Papali'i To'omua is an Australian rugby union professional player who has played over 35 times for Australia since 2013. He plays for the Melbourne Rebels in Super Rugby and his usual position is at fly-half or inside centre. He has previously played for the Brumbies in Australia and for Leicester Tigers in England's Premiership Rugby.
The Melbourne Rising was an Australian rugby union team based in Melbourne that competed in the National Rugby Championship (NRC). The team represented the rugby community in Victoria and was organised and managed by Rugby Victoria with the coaching and training programs used by the Melbourne Rebels being extended to players joining the team from the Rebels, the local Dewar Shield competition, and local Victorian juniors.
Rugby union has a long history in Australia, with the first club being formed in 1863 at Sydney University. Today it holds tier one status with World Rugby and has over 82,000 players nationwide.
The Australian Provincial Championship, or APC was a rugby union football competition played in Australia. It was one of several provincial competitions since the late 1960s, including the Wallaby Trophy and Ricoh National Championship, that have not continued.
Cadeyrn Neville is an Australian rugby union player. His regular playing position is lock. He represents the ACT Brumbies in Super Rugby.
Rugby union in Western Australia describes the sport of rugby union being played and watched in the state of Western Australia. First introduced some time in 1868 it was the most popular football code until it was overtaken by Australian rules football in Western Australia in 1885. After a period of decline and recess between 1905 and 1927 it grew throughout the 20th century. The governing body is the Western Australia Rugby Union (RugbyWA).
Jack Debreczeni is a New Zealand rugby union player who currently plays as a fly half for the ACT Brumbies in the Super Rugby Pacific competition.
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The 2021 Super Rugby AU season was a professional club rugby union tournament organised by Rugby Australia. Announced on 11 November 2020, the tournament was the second season of Super Rugby AU, featuring the same 5 teams from the inaugural 2020 season, and ran from 19 February to 8 May 2021. The tournament was won by the Reds, who defeated the Brumbies 19–16 in the final at Suncorp Stadium, winning their first Super Rugby AU title, and first Super Rugby competition since 2011.
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