ACT Veterans Rugby Club

The ACT Vets are a rugby union team based in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory (ACT) whose players must be 35 years of age or older. Portsea Oval, RMC Duntroon is the club's home ground^[1]

The Honorary Patron in Chief of the club is General Sir Peter Cosgrove AK MC (Retd), Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia.

History

John Hillier was captain/coach of the Canberra Royals 5th Grade team in 1994 and, at the age of 34, was getting tired of running with much younger players and decided to establish a club for older players who still wanted to play rugby but didn’t want to be involved in grade competitions. The Evergreens, a Canberra Golden Oldies team, was only formed every three to four years to play in international Golden Oldies tournaments. Hillier felt there was a need to have a regular schedule of games to keep players involved in the sport in their post grade-competition years. With the assistance of Wests Lions and the Queanbeyan Whites, Hillier developed plans for a regular game schedule for a new veterans’ rugby team.

The ACT Veterans Rugby team played its first game at O’Connor Oval in March 1995. More than thirty players turned up for the first game together with many officers from the Australian Royal Military College, Duntroon (RMC). It was the start of a new co-operative relationship with the RMC that has remained ever since. Given the large numbers for the first game, it was decided to form three teams playing each other over three 20 minute periods. The tradition of the three ‘halves’ has continued on. The early games also established other rules of Veterans Rugby, like no pushing in scrums but contested line-outs, rucks and mauls. This schedule of games at O’Connor Oval with RMC continued through the 1995 and 1996 seasons and in 1997, at the invitation of RMC, the ACT Veterans moved to Portsea Oval which has been the club’s home ground ever since.

Notable Players

• Bill Stefaniak is one of the two original players still playing with the ACT Vets after 20 years.

• Ian Wells, a stalwart of the Canberra Easts rugby club for many years and former military pilot started playing for the ACT Vets in 2005-06 in his mid seventies. Due to his age, he wears gold coloured shorts and cannot be touched by any player. He is therefore the club’s highest try scorer, having scored at least one try in every match he has played for the ACT Vets. Ian has also been ‘Man of the Match’ for every Brumbies curtain raiser he has played and is a crowd favourite out at Canberra Stadium.

• Stephen Larkham played with the ACT Veterans at the World Vintage Rugby Carnival in Hawaii in September 2012. During this carnival he also played as a reserve for an old boys team from Brazil who, not realising who he was, asked him to play second row because he was tall. Despite his commitments with the Brumbies, Larkham occasionally still plays with the ACT Vets.

• Mal Meninga started playing for the ACT Veterans following the 1997 Australian Masters Games in Canberra. When playing against the Western Samoa Golden Oldies team, Meninga started on the bench for the first time in his life and jokingly commented that this was a new experience for him.

• General David Hurley AC, DSC, current Governor of New South Wales, has played both for and against the ACT Veterans in a number of games, helping the Army Old Boys and RMC in charity matches. He is also a Honorary Patron of the club.

• Andrew Walker (rugby) played for the ACT Veterans during the 2010 Pan Pacific Masters Games.

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to ACT Veterans Rugby Club.

• Official site
• Canberra Times - The most powerful rugby club in Australia