
Trugo (Australia)
- Name of sport (game): Trugo; Historical spellings: Tru-go, True-Go, True Go
- Name in native language: Trugo
- Place of practice (continent, state, nation):
Trugo is a highly localised sport with competitive play restricted to the inner suburbs of the City of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
- History:
Although there are many oral traditions for the origins of Trugo, the game is generally credited to a railway worker Thomas Grieves who in the early 20th century was a resident of Newport, an inner western suburb of Melbourne and the site of the largest railway workshops in the Southern Hemisphere.
Employees at the workshops formed many formal sporting teams but also enjoyed bringing their sense of gamesmanship to lunch time play exploiting workshop tools and spare parts to spontaneously invent games. One of those games appears to have been Trugo. The inspiration for what was then an impromptu game was the rubber rings taken from the buffers of 19th century railway carriages brought in to be scrapped or refurbished. The rings could be bowled, struck with a mallet, or thrown.
Towards the end of Grieves’ career, he became unwell and on leaving the railways he took the game of Trugo with him to lift his spirits and aid his health in retirement. Between 1926 and the early 1930s Grieves experimented with the game but it was his meeting with a local engineer and keen amateur sportsman Claus Ebeling that spurred the games development. Ebeling was well connected and in 1936 Grieves and Ebeling formed the Yarraville Trugo Club from what had been an informal gathering of men in the local park.
During the second half of the 1930s the sport developed rapidly along the city’s western rail line culminating in the formation of the Victorian Trugo Association in 1940 by 5 clubs: Williamstown, Newport, Yarraville, Footscray and West Footscray. The sport then spread to other inner working-class Melbourne suburbs as well country Victoria. Beyond Victoria, there were attempts to introduce it to other states, namely Western Australia, New South Wales and Tasmania but the game failed to take hold.
While the sport attracted an increasingly diverse membership it continued to retain links with its railway yard origins. This can be seen in the retention of the ring modelled on a railway carriage buffer ring and in the measurements of the courts: the goals the width of a Victorian railway track, 5ft 9 in (the gauge plus the tracks); the length of the courts equivalent to two spans of Victorian railway track, 90ft, as measured in the 1920s and 1930s.Claus Ebeling (left) and Thomas Grieves (right), founded the Yarraville Trugo Club in 1936. Photo: January 1938
Outside of this railway theme, the worker’s mallets or sledgehammers were replaced with croquet mallets in the 1930s which proved both practical and referenced the games new sporting credentials. There was a further key development in the 1950s when players began to strike the ring through their legs, a swing known as tunnelling, rather than from their side, referred to as sideswiping. This new technique required a short handle mallets, which were commonly crafted by the players in backyard workshops.
Footscray Trugo Club, VTA Premiers 1946, note the long handled mallets and formality of the attire.
Trugo continued to develop until the late 1990s early 2000s when it experienced a severe decline dropping to just 60 competition players in the 2009 VTA season. Fortunately, as the perceptions of the sport moved from a seniors’ sport to a heritage sport, a much broader age range and more women players began to be attracted to the game. This played a significant role in halting the sport’s decline. Today, most clubs are relatively stable, and the possibilities of expansion is again on the horizon along with greater recognition of Trugo as part of Melbourne’s intangible history.
- Description:
The game of Trugo is played on a flat grass court 90 ft (27 meters) long with short metal or wooden goal posts place 5ft 9in (1.7 meters) apart at both ends of the court. The aim of the game is to use a mallet to strike a rubber ring in a single shot directly through the goals at the opposite end of the court. Typically, players turn their backs to the goals and shoot the ring blindly between their feet in a technique known as tunnelling.
The ring must pass cleanly between the goals. It cannot be deflected off any border and if the ring should graze or knock one of the goal posts down this is referred to as a ‘poster’ and no goal is awarded. The arbitrator of the game is the catcher who stands behind the goal mouth with a hooped bag on a long handle to catch the rings once they pass through the goals. The catcher signals to the scorers whether it is a goal, wide, or poster.
A catcher signals a successful goal to the scorers by raising their hand. If a goal is scored the ring is threaded on to the pole of the catcher. Here a ring threaded onto the pole indicates a goal has already been scored.
A standard Victorian Trugo Association match consists of 8 players per team with four playing in the first half and the remaining four playing the second half. Each team member plays 3 innings, each inning consisting of four rings, before swapping ends to complete a further 3 innings for a total of 24 shots. The ultimate individual achievement when playing the game is to strike all 24 rings through the goals. This is referred to as ‘The Possible’ and is a rare accomplishment for any player.
In addition to the 8-player form of the game, championships are held at the end of each season for singles, pairs and fours.A Yarraville player (left) and Brunswick player (right) set themselves up for the 2023 pairs championship. The player places the rubber ring on a metal backed rubber plate between the goals ready to shoot to the goals at the opposite end.
- Current status:
Trugo is a non-professional sport overseen by a single governing body: the Victorian Trugo Association (VTA). Currently there are 9 teams from 7 clubs in the premiership competition. The VTA season runs from spring to early autumn with the home and away series followed by a final series for the top four teams. Teams outside the top four play for a consolation cup.
Beyond formal competition there are also community or cultural events where the game is played along with social games played within clubs. - Importance (for practitioners, communities etc.):
Outside of the games of first nations peoples, Trugo is one of the few games wholly conceived and developed in Australia and is a rare example of a highly regional sport. Two key themes can be found in its history, first the story of the Australian railway worker and second the evolution of social programs to maintain the welfare and dignity of senior citizens. In its more contemporary form, it has adopted the objective of building connections between generations with teams of players made up of a wide age range and mixed gender.
- Contacts:
Victorian Trugo Association
VTA PresidentThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
VTA SecretaryThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. The following Victorian clubs which can be contacted via the VTA or via their Facebook pages:
Brunswick Trugo Club (teams: Brunswick, Brunswick City)
Footscray Trugo Club (teams: Footscray Doughnuts, Footscray Gumnuts)
South Melbourne Trugo Club
Yarraville Trugo Club
Ascot Vale Trugo Club
Sandridge Trugo Club
Port Melbourne Trugo ClubOutside of the VTA:
Northshore Trugo (Sydney, New South Wales) - Sources of information :
Books:
Nadel, Dave & Graeme Ryan. 2015. Sport in Victoria. Melbourne, Ryan Publishing.
Victorian Trugo Association.1983. Over Fifty Years of Trugo, Melbourne, Victorian Trugo Association.Articles:
Dexter, Rachael (producer) & Mie Sorensen 2020 ‘Trugo: Melbourne's own working-class sport’. The Age. https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/trugo-melbournes-own-working-class-sport-20200207-5izn6.html
Thomas, P.S. 2022. The West’s Own Tru-go. Westsider, 19 July. https://thewestsider.com.au/the-wests-own-tru-go/
Wixted, David & Simon Reeves. 2006. Footscray Trugo Club Pavillion and Grounds, 139 Buckley Street, Seddon: Conservation analysis. The City of Maribyrnong.The information contained in the article comes from the following sources:
Victorian Trugo AssociationSource of photos used in this article and gallery:
Victorian Trugo Association - Gallery: