Newcastle rugby league team

The Newcastle rugby league team is a representative rugby league football team made up of players selected from the Newcastle Rugby League's first grade clubs. Also called Newcastle Firsts, the team has been assembled occasionally since rugby league's first season in Australia in 1908.

On the Australian leg of the 1907–1908 New Zealand rugby tour of Australia and Great Britain the 'professional All Blacks' played a Newcastle side at rugby union, defeating them 53-6. They then played a "Northern Districts" selection and defeated them 37-8 in the first ever game of rugby league played in Newcastle. The visit by the New Zealanders boosted the profile of rugby league in Newcastle as the Newcastle Rebels, the only non-Sydney club in the newly-formed New South Wales Rugby Football League, were playing all their matches away in Sydney. As a result of the visit playing numbers in Newcastle surged and in 1910 the Rebels dropped out of the NSWRFL to form the Newcastle Rugby League.

In 1911 Newcastle played against the touring New Zealand team in a tight match almost pulling off an upset before going down 21-20. During the 1913 New Zealand rugby league tour of Australia Newcastle played a match against the Kiwis and won.

Ten of the 1914 Newcastle rugby league team went to serve in World War I, including their captain Stan Carpenter. He was joined by Horace Brown, secretary of the Newcastle and Northern District rugby leagues, within 10 days of the declaration of war. Both fought at Gallipoli, with Carpenter said to have been the first member of the Australian Imperial Force to be recommended for a Victoria Cross. He instead received a Distinguished Service Medal.

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