Organised Touch Football starts in Sydney, Australia
Early 1960s
Bill Cameron, one of the founders of touch football in Brisbane, remembers:
“I played lower grades for Manly Warringah (rugby league) in 1963-1964 and Rex Mossop always organised a game of touch after official training sessions on Brookvale oval.
He also ran a game of touch every Sunday morning on Freshwater Beach – and others played on various Northern Beaches, but not in an organised competition as such.”
1966 / 1967
Recollections by Barry Kennedy
1966 “My memory of the early days of touch in Sydney is that the first competition between teams was held at Redfern Oval in 1966 organised by John Grant, at the time halfback for the South Sydney Rabbitohs (Rugby League).
1967 The second organised competition was in 1967 run by the manager of Glebe Youth RL club in Glebe Point Park who refereed. At the time the park had a tarred road angling through it with streetlights. So the field had an angled sideline, which meant one trying was wider than the other. Players used to complain about it and the ref would respond with “you will have the wide try-line in the second half”. Many of Balmain’s first grade league players played, including Arthur Beetson and Dennis Tutty as well as many young guys like me.”
1968 South Sydney, Australia
A new Touch Football competition started in South Sydney, NSW. This was an organised competition run over a season with multiple teams and controlled by a properly formed association set up for that purpose. For more to this story, go to South Sydney Touch story.
1968 news story by Roy Masters Sydney Morning Herald article, 18 February 2015
The following article claims the first competition started in South Sydney – this is disputed by the above recollections.
Rival clubs observed a confident swagger about NRL premiers South Sydney while in Auckland for the recent Nines tournament. The Rabbitohs proceeded to win the prestigious pre-season competition and their captain Greg Inglis led his Indigenous All Stars team to victory on the Gold Coast.
Souths are now in England, preparing for their World Club Series match against St Helens.
Dapper: John Sattler on the cover of the program for the South Sydney touch football tournament.
Coach Michael Maguire is clearly keen to win whatever trophy is available. OK, they have suffered a PR disaster with revelations of the locking up of their former captain John Sutton following a high altitude training camp in Arizona.
Maguire is probably more angry with Sutton and past teammate Luke Burgess for breaking curfew, rather than the bar brawl. It’s long been a mantra of coaches that “these things don’t happen if you don’t break curfew”. So, with the Rabbitohs within close proximity to Manchester’s tempting bars and nightclubs, you can be certain no one will break curfew.
It’s been a heady pre-season, with the Broncos and Dragons joining the Rabbitohs in England for matches against Super League clubs. The Bulldogs and Storm are even holding a historic joint training session in Melbourne on Wednesday night.
Yet Souths leading the way in a code pushing new promotional boundaries is not new.
On the night of February 9, 1968, premiers South Sydney hosted rugby league’s first touch football tournament at Redfern Oval.
Only two Sydney teams did not participate – Wests were probably still at Lidcombe’s Railway Hotel and the Bulldogs were a no-show.
Jack Gibson was the coach of the Roosters, Dave Bolton was in the Balmain team, Dick Thornett and Barry Rushworth ran out for the Eels, as did Barry Beath and Dick Huddart for the Dragons, while the Sea Eagles fielded a strong team, including Bob Fulton, Frank Stanton, Denis Ward and Fred Jones.
South Sydney paraded the pride of their 1967 premiership team, coached by Clive Churchill – John Sattler, Ron Coote, Bob McCarthy, Ivan Jones, Jim Lisle, Bobby Honan and Brian James.
James is credited in the official program with promoting the evening, which included sprint and mile races.
Co-organiser, Jack Thom, writes: “The idea came from Brian James, our South Sydney winger, and without his hard work and time generously spent, this function could not have been organised.”
Thom, a South Sydney stalwart, was also a lawyer and defended the mother-in-law of Balmain’s Bobby Lulham, accused of poisoning the international winger.
The seven men per side, seven minutes per half competition was not called touch, although the official rules declare: “A player is ‘tackled’ when he is touched with two hands by an opposition player.”
The tournament was actually named, the “Figaro” Football Competition, named after a prominent hair tonic whose advertising slogan was: “If there’s a bee in your bonnet, put Figaro on it.”
The program has a photo of a very suave, suited but pensive Sattler, sitting cross-legged on a bar stool, hair suitably treated.
Billed as “South Sydney Charity Night”, all proceeds went to the Spastic Centre. It obviously pre-dated the Charity Shield match between the Rabbitohs and Dragons, which began in 1982.
James argues that history should credit himself and Thom with initiating touch football, an important issue following last year’s historic amalgamation of the Australian Touch Football Association and the ARL Commission.
Wikipedia says: “The first actual official game of touch was played in late 1968 and the first official competition, organised by Bob Dyke and Ray Vawdon [two officials of the South Sydney Junior Rugby League Club], was held at Snape Park, Sydney in 1969.”
James points out that his tournament preceded the Juniors’ match by at least six months. Asked who formulated the rules, James said: “To my memory Jack Thom, myself and the NSWRL Referees Association produced these rules from scratch.”
“If someone else produced these rules, why would they wait so long to arrange a match?”
Fair point. The rules, as recorded in the program, are most precise and the referees and touch judges came from the NSWRL Referees Association.
James cannot recall who won the tournament, but he was in good form three months later to be selected in the World Cup, which Australia won with four Immortals – John Raper, Graeme Langlands, Arthur Beetson and Fulton.
Asked if the events of nearly 50 years ago have any relevance to now, the ex-Rabbitoh said: “Yes, on our end-of-season trip to Fiji, two of our blokes were hauled away and quizzed by the local coppers.”