The first Golden Oldies Rugby tournament took place in 1979 in Auckland, where 13 New Zealand, one USA and one Canadian teams took part in the inaugural festival. It ran at a huge loss but caught the imagination of Air New Zealand who took it over and organized the next festival in Long Beach, California in 1981 which was a major success. Eager to encourage Australian teams to participate, Air New Zealand made Sydney the venue for the next festival in 1983. Perth’s Rugby fraternity heard about this and sent a team of ex-state players to Sydney, and called them “the Old-Golds” . This was to be the start of Western Australia’s involvement in Golden Oldies Rugby. The "OLD GOLD'S" sent over 80 players to London in 1985 and around 70 to Auckland in 1987 where it was first suggested that Perth would make an ideal venue for a Golden Oldies festival. Over the next two years discussion took place between Air NZ the “OLD GOLD'S” and the “City of Perth” and a further 70 players went to Toronto in 1989 with the news that Perth would be the venue for the 1991 festival. Between 1989 and 1991 Peter Bailey and the Old-Gold’s secretary (Peter Messenger) worked tirelessly to organize the Perth festival which turned out to be a raging success. In 1991 SCRUM was officially created and the Perth festival attracted 41 teams from Western Australia alone. After the success of the Perth festival, 1992‘s season started with 24 local teams including those here tonight but others since long defunct such as “Joondalup Blues Brothers”, “Kalamunda Old Bulls”. “Dereks Devils”, “The Madurah Pirates”, “Old Black Pigs”, “Old Boars”, “MUGS”, “Roaring 40s”, “SILVERADOS” , “SWAGS”, “OLD SOAKS” and “POMES”. In 2000 there were still 15 to 18 teams playing regularly which has recently dropped to 11 or 13 teams, mainly due to the introduction of 4th and 5th grades into the WARU competition. John Kirkby (with information from Peter Bailey) October 2010
Last Updated 02/05/2012
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