Centurions Club History

The Newcastle Centurions are proudly the first official Australian Rules Football club to be formed in Tyne and Wear. What started as an open invitation during the summer of 2006 on a community website for anyone interested in a casual ‘kick-about’ quickly grew to become a fully constituted club with over twenty paying members.

Rick Shrowder, a sports coach in Newcastle but originally from Australia was initially looking for other Australians in the area that may want to get together for a kick and a catch of his beloved Aussie Rules ball. Soon after posting the invitation Brian Clarke from Aussie Rules UK made contact with Rick telling him of a new league he was starting in the North East for 2007. It was suggested that a starting point for putting a team together would be to get affiliated with a local Rugby Union club. Through a couple of contacts Rick got in touch with Graeme Cooper, Head Coach at the Novocastrians Rugby Club. It was here that the bulk of the recruiting took place through several informal introductions to the game at their mid week training sessions. The response from the players was fantastic. It was a new game requiring new skills and the guys were really up for it and keen to learn.

Having a base level of fitness and hand-eye coordination skills were certainly key factors in the Centurions enjoying early success but ultimately it was the commitment shown by the guys to train and improve that led them to be runners up in their first season. This was quite an achievement as the team consisted of only one Australian who had played the game before; the other teams had considerably more experience.

Season 2008 started in April with a huge turnout of over 20 people attending the first couple training sessions. This was fantastic as many of the guys were new and hadn’t played the game before. Although we also had the addition of an Australian who added a bit of experience, the really encouraging aspect of the increase in numbers was the fact that everyone who had played the previous year went away and recruited more guys for this year. Even more encouraging was the way that the ‘senior’ players from the year before started to take charge and run the training sessions themselves. The season got off to a great start with a big win and this was a trend that continued right up to the last match before the Grand Final which saw the team suffer its first loss.

The Grand Final was a different story though and it seemed that nothing was going to stop the Centurions from going one better than the previous year’s disappointment.
The win was a deserving one for all the players that have taken so well to this brand new sport. Now that the Newcastle Centurions have tasted that success it will be very difficult for any team to take it away from them. There will be many more premierships at the Centurions that is for sure.