New South Wales Suburban Rugby Union

New South Wales Suburban Rugby

Subbies
Sport	Rugby union
Founded	1933 (Metropolitan S.D.R.U.) 1990 (NSW Suburban R.U.)
NSWRU affiliation	1933
Website	www.rugby.net.au

The New South Wales Suburban Rugby Union, or NSWSRU, is affiliated to the New South Wales Rugby Union and runs the competition affectionately known as "Subbies" rugby. There are around 7500 players and 55 clubs competing across 6 divisions, making "Subbies" the largest centrally administered rugby competition in the world. NSWSRU is truly the grassroots of rugby in Sydney.

The major trophy in "Subbies" is the Kentwell Cup that is awarded to the first grade premiers of the first division competition. The NSWSRU selects representative sides to compete against New South Wales Country for the Maher-Ross Cup, and Queensland Suburban for the Barraclough Shield.

Football under rugby rules began to be played in the 1860s in Sydney’s schools. Some of these former students wanted to go on playing and, along with an increasing population of new arrivals in Sydney, this led to the start of club football. After 1872, rugby football clubs grew rapidly in number.

Sydney rugby in the early years was played by Senior teams and Junior teams (where Junior denoted the second tier, not the age of the players). The Senior competition was run by the Southern Rugby Union (SRU, later to become the NSWRU) and had been in existence from 1874, but matches for Junior sides were arranged on an ad hoc basis until after the 1885 season. The SRU only began to involve itself in rugby for Junior teams in 1882, and only established a formal Junior competition in 1886.

Some of the clubs in the original Junior competition were Petersham (who still exist in the Suburban competition today), Manly Federals, the Warrigals and Wentworth. Most of these clubs fielded one team and the competition received coverage in Sydney's newspapers under "Other matches". By 1896, in an early sign of what later led to the schism with rugby league, tensions emerged with suggestions that Senior clubs were trying to poach players with talent at Junior clubs using ‘incentives’ and that Junior players were being paid a match fee.

A new branch of the NSWRU called the Metropolitan Rugby Union (MRU) was formed in 1897 to administer the Sydney competitions and re-organise the clubs along district lines. The previous Junior clubs and players were essentially merged into new district clubs. More than twenty Junior clubs, including foundation members of the union, vanished from the books in 1898.