Next time you find yourself in Glebe, check out that suburb’s epic and beautiful Town Hall. Located well away from the hustle of Glebe Point Road, Glebe Town Hall sits quietly on St Johns Road, directly next to the popular Nag’s Head Hotel.

In this town hall on January 9 – 110 years ago - a meeting was held. By the end of it, the first rugby league club in Australia had been formed. As highly respected historians Ian Heads and David Middleton noted in their 2008 book A Centenary of Rugby League, at that meeting the club “elected no less an identity than future Prime Minister William Morris Hughes as their patron”.

For 110 years a delicious and extremely fun debate has raged amongst the game’s historians about which rugby league club is the oldest in the country. Newtown disciples still argue to this day that their club, now famously known as the Newtown Jets, was formed at a meeting at Newtown Town Hall (which is still located at the junction of King St and Enmore Road) a day before Glebe’s formation meeting.

Newtown Town Hall. (Photo by James Smith)

David Middleton has followed the discussion closely over the years. “Officials of the Newtown club cling steadfastly to the belief that they were first, formed on January 8 in 1908,” he wrote in a news story a few years back. “However, newspaper reports from the period clearly record that the Glebe club – long since defunct – was established first on January 9, 1908.”

“The Newtown men claim bragging rights due to the possession of the club’s first minute book, with the date 8/1/1908 hand-written by the original club secretary. League historians including Ian Heads, Geoff Armstrong and Sean Fagan are convinced that the date on the minute book is almost certainly incorrect, while Newtown is equally adamant that their club’s record is authentic.”