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Cloncurry's rugby revival is a shining light for the sport in Australia

Roar Rookie
9th January, 2019
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Roar Rookie
9th January, 2019
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The game of rugby is flourishing in parts of Australia when you look at crowds gathering at Shute Shield grand finals.

However the further away from the Heartland rugby that are Brisbane and Sydney the fainter the heartbeat gets.

But rugby is passion and passionate people are the heart and soul of our sport.

There is a place called Cloncurry, if you haven’t heard of it don’t worry – closest place that you would’ve heard of to it is Mt Isa.

This area is as tough as it is remote and the dominant winter sport here in outback Queensland is rugby league.

However, there is a small group of passionate rugby people trying to revive our great game in the heartland of rugby league.

It’s hard to do this when the local competition will not give you a home game. How do you get the townsfolk to realise you actually exist within their town borders if you can’t play it in front of them?

This was the problem faced by Cloncurry Rugby Club, the answer was to host an annual tens competition in the preseason to ignite the rugby spirit Within the town.

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Last year was the Club’s inaugural tens competition. They drew a single nomination from their own team.

But being rugby people, one failure did not dissuade them – it only made they desire greater.

This year Cloncurry rugby club on the third of March is doing it again. They are hosting a tens tournament. It was looking like going the same way as last year but only just today have received four nominations.

If it wasn’t for volunteers and passionate rugby tragics, the sport would be dying.

I see and hear people complain every day about the state of our sport.

And it’s stories like this – of people doing something and not complaining, of taking action not voicing opinions. This gives me hope that our great sport will once again dominate the headlines in this country.

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If you’re reading this and you’ve got this far, you can be part of the solution. Volunteer to turn some sausages at your local rugby club.

Volunteer if you have the time to manage your team, to help set up the fields on Saturday. It’s the passion for grassroots rugby community which is going to reignite the pulse of our great game of rugby across this land again.

Hey and if you can scrape together a team to travel to Cloncurry for the third of March that would be awesome!

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