Newtown is a foundation club of the original New South Wales Rugby Football League, which conducted its first season in 1908. A good way to start a fight amongst rugby league geeks is to suggest that either Newtown or Glebe was the first RL club to be formed in Australia. Both claim they were established a day before the other, much to the humour of outsiders.

Whether it had anything to do with the fact it played its home games on top of an old brickyard is debateable, but the club, known as the Bluebags from 1908-1972, became famous for its gritty, never-say-die fighting spirit. Newtown won three premierships (1910, 1933, 1943) and was runner-up seven times during the club’s time in the top tier of the game Down Under. Some of the sport’s greatest legends have either worn the royal blue of Newtown and/or played at Henson. Its most famous are arguably Frank “Bumper” Farrell, a legendary policeman and footballer who played 250 games for Newtown between 1938-51, and ruthless, competitive halfback Tommy Raudonikis, who skippered the Jets in the club’s last grand final, against Parramatta at the Sydney Cricket Ground in 1981.

(Photo by MARIO FACCHINI - MAF PHOTOGRAPHY)

We’re not paying him due homage here with this mere mention, but another all-time great player, Brian “Chicka” Moore, like Farrell and Tommy, and a massive star across the ’60s and ’70s, can be carried around with you for life via his images which adorn Jets club merchandise. Indeed, the club’s famous royal blue Paramount Shirts-sponsored jersey is still among the most well-known in rugby league.

The Jets’ controversial dumping from the NSWRL at the end of the 1983 season for financial reasons – despite several attempts by many parties to revive them – attracted plenty of anger from the die-hards. But as the club’s famous song goes, Newtown is the club “that will not yield”. For the past 17 years it’s been playing in the second-tier NSW Cup and its various forms. Today, the Jets are a feeder club for National Rugby League outfit the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks, but their fans are as dedicated, and players as proud to wear the royal blue, as those of any NRL club.

The feeder club set-up works both ways between the Shire Boys and the Bluebags. Today at Henson Park the Jets are benefitting in a big way from the services of NRL-level, 150-game-plus second row/prop Sam Tagataese. The New Zealand-born Samoan has played for the Melbourne Storm and Gold Coast Titans in seasons past, and came off the bench for the Sharks in the club’s glorious first-ever NRL premiership win in 2016. Also out in the middle for the Jets is Joseph Paulo. The lock/backrower/five-eighth utility has played 140-plus games of his own in the NRL for Penrith, Parramatta and Cronulla since 2008. The 29-year-old has played internationals for Samoa and America and is showing his class out there in front of a bumper crowd which “Bumper” himself would have been proud of.

(Photo by MARIO FACCHINI - MAF PHOTOGRAPHY)