Not many people on the East coast know we’ve had a RL comp in WA since the 40’s,
Celebrating 70 years of Rugby League in Western Australia & the birth of the South Perth Lions
1948
It was on an end of season train trip November 1947 when South Perth and university went down to Australind to play a game. Here, Roy Williams, Gordon Squire & Alf Schaffer got discussing the formation of a rugby league competition.
On his return to Perth Alf Schaffer spoke with the committee members of the South Perth Club and Gordon Squire did the same with the Fremantle club. Both clubs were in agreement to switch to the rugby league code. Alf Schaffer, Roy Williams, Ken Allen & Gordon Squire, discussed and worked on a plan to form what would become the first Rugby League competition in Perth.
Each one of the men at the meeting would then go back to their respective clubs to hold a special meeting of members to put in place the process of breaking away from Rugby Union.
January 1948, a special general meeting of the South Perth players and supporters was held in the Mends street hall, South Perth. There were 82 members present, it was a unanimous vote in favour of converting to Rugby League. The other clubs to come over were Fremantle, Cottesloe, Perth & Nedlands along with South Perth this was a five-team competition. The games were played on the Esplanade Perth. The South Perth Lions dominated the competition during the early years, winning premierships in first grade and second grade. We had two third grade sides a & b and nine junior sides.
South Perth Rugby League Club, the Lions, moved over the river to Windsor park, Mill Point Road South Perth. This became the spiritual home of the mighty red & white Lions of South Perth.
Reg Fisher recalls, the first committees were made up of office workers, ex-army and RAAF personal. Most of these men had served in the horrors of world war II, Mr Bob Chester and Mr Dan Fogarty flew thirty bombing missions over Berlin. It was the spirit, discipline and hardness of people like Bob that set the foundations for our club. Bob and his wife Gwen were the corner stone of our club in the early years.
Jim Burns was our first President, Captain and Life member. He was succeeded by Alf Schaffer as President for the next Twenty-Two years.
1950’s
Bob & Gwen Chester owned Robert’s dairy, with help from members of the club in the early fifties they converted the dairy to Chesterton lodge, this was located just off Mill Point Road. The lodge was used for wedding receptions and social functions, it also became the main meeting place and headquarters for the club. Many fundraising and club social functions were held at the lodge. With the help of Bob & Gwen many dress up nights were held, as well as major fund-raising nights. Bob served as club and state coach for the next ten years. Before the lodge, the boys in this period would gather at the Esplanade Hotel where the publican made an upstairs room available for meetings & functions.
There was no building or change rooms at Windsor park, the boys would get changed in their cars and after the game would shower in the artesian hot pool at the zoo. Our first official building was in the mid-fifties, when the city of South Perth council agreed to let the club build a change room at Windsor Park. The agreement was that they would supply all the material and the members would build the rooms. This was not a good thing as most of the members were office workers. There was not a trades man among them, apart from Keith Fisher, a second-year apprentice bricklayer. After a lot of spilt blood, skinned knuckles and two years of not a lot of progress the council finished the job.
The building was 10mtr x 4mtr, it had four shower heads at one end, a timber slatted bench seat along one side wall and the rear wall, two cupboards for storage & a rub down table. There were no toilets, the toilets were the public toilets at the back of the community hall behind the rooms. Both the home side and the away side used the rooms to change and shower in.
This was the clubs first official home at the ground, a lot of meetings were held there as well as a lot of kegs and good times. On many a Sunday, a keg would be sorted, and the boys would have a get together. It was also the meeting place for the bottle top club, and many a court case was conducted. In later years we were able to use the Scout hall across on the zoo side of the oval for away teams to change. There were no showers in the scout hall so away teams still had to shower in our rooms.
To begin with there were only two light poles for training on the bowling club side, later on two more were installed on the tennis club side of the oval.
Up to this point the in our history of our club as a Rugby League club we had won premierships under;
Club Coaches
Jim Carrol – 1948
Bob Chester - 1949, 52, 53,54,57,58.
Presidents
Alf Schaffer 1951 - 1972
NRL - National Rugby League
