While the Goulburn Rugby Club is known as the Dirty Reds they haven’t always been the familiar Maroon and White.
In the club’s entry to the Canberra competition in 1957, we wore White with a Sky Blue V. In 1958 we wore Black with a White collar.
Those jumpers have never been re-struck since then. Until now.
This year replicas of those jumpers will be worn in the President’s XV v Invitational XV match with Jackson Reardon captaining the President’s XV, and Boyd Newby skippering the Invitational XV.
And the jumpers won’t just be on show, they are available for YOU to own if you successfully bid for them in the special online auction. Starting NOW.
Also on auction is the 2020 Women’s jumper, a replica of the jumper they wore in their first year of XVs. Details for those jumpers will be added shortly.
Follow this link and you’ll see the jumper numbers (including sizes). The auction will close at 9.30pm on October 22… during the Goulburn Rugby 150th Anniversary Reunion Ball.
So get bidding… you’ll be notified when someone outbids you so you can jump in and have another go. But PLEASE only genuine bids.
History of the club colours
When it first began, the Goulburn Rugby Club borrowed what were then the colours of Valentine Riley’s former club, Sydney University… white with sky blue. So the 1957 jumper, although a different design, continued that legacy.
In the late 1800s, early 1900s the local rep side based out of Goulburn, the Central Southern Rugby Union, wore red.
A few World Wars later, and when Goulburn entered the Canberra competition in 1957, they wore a white jumper with Sky Blue V in honour of the Waratah sports club that helped the club get back on it’s feet.
That only lasted a year, as the colour scheme was deemed to be too close to the Queanbeyan Whites.
The following year, 1958, the club wore black with white collar.
Again, that lasted a year. There was a bit of a schism in the club and a second Goulburn team was formed, and they ordered Maroon with white collar. The organisers of the competition were dead against there being two Goulburn clubs due to anticipated lack of numbers, and said they would only accept one Goulburn club.
Wiser heads prevailed, and the players decided they liked the Maroon and White better. The club was known as simply “the Maroons.”
In May of 1975, Peter Parlett refers to “the Dirty Reds as Terry Tilden calls them.” Terry had observed, in matches against the Drummoyne Dirty Reds, that our jumpers were an even dirtier red. The name stuck.
