Glebe Dirty Reds to become feeder club for the Roosters’ New South Wales Cup side

For the first time since 2005, the Roosters will field its own New South Wales Cup team this season, having previously outsourced its reserve grade to the likes of the Newtown Jets, Wyong Roos and North Sydney Bears.

The deal will see Glebe field a Ron Massey Cup (third tier competition) and, for the first time, a Sydney Shield (fourth tier) side, providing a talent pool and a pathway for rising players. The Roosters will then be able to send some NSW Cup and Jersey Flegg players to play Ron Massey and Shield footy each weekend.

The Dirty Reds lay claim to being the oldest rugby league club in Australia, but were unceremoniously dumped from the first grade competition in 1929. In 2017, Glebe President Darren Flynn resurrected the historic club after more than 80 years, entering a team that season’s Ron Massey Cup.

Just six years on, and the Dirty Reds have made two grand finals, are thriving off the field and have now secured the role of the Roosters’ official lower grade feeder team.

“The Roosters decided to bring the New South Wales Cup back in-house, and the big challenge is having a feeder system in place,” Flynn tells CODE Sports.

“They can send excess New South Wales Cup players back to a well-run Ron Massey Cup outfit and have those pathways in place.

“That was a big benefit to the Roosters.

“We were a local club to them, too. Not in their district, but very close to Roosters junior territory, and we’ve been very successful in Ron Massey Cup over the past few seasons.”

The new three-year deal will see Glebe return to its spiritual home of Wentworth Park in inner-Sydney on a full-time basis.

Now the home of greyhound racing in New South Wales, Wentworth Park was Glebe’s home ground for its first 20 years, and – along with Birchgrove Oval – hosted the very first premiership games of the inaugural 1908 NSWRL season.

Glebe beat Newcastle and Eastern Suburbs defeated Newtown at Wenty Park that day 115 years ago, and now they’ll be reunited again each Sunday.

“We always wanted to be the Glebe Dirty Reds playing out of Wentworth Park, but it’s something we couldn’t have afforded to do previously,” Flynn says.

“The Roosters won their first premiership in a final against Glebe in 1911 as well, so the ability to partner with a foundation club with so much shared history was huge.

“Wentworth Park is a terrific facility, but it hasn’t been used as a top-level rugby league venue for many, many years, so there’s a few upgrades going on at the moment.

“But game days will be a festival of footy with four back-to-back matches, kicking off with Sydney Shield, into Ron Massey Cup, Jersey Flegg and New South Wales Cup.”

Flynn’s long term goal is to re-energise rugby league in the inner city.

“Participation in some inner city areas have dropped over the past 20 or 30 years,” he says.

“They’re picking back up now, and we want to be part of that regeneration.

“This should be a partnership that sees more boys and girls across the city take up the game, and the hope is that the club will grow organically over the next 10 years, and there’s more interest generated locally and numbers will continue to rise.”

Glebe’s new set-up means its fruitful partnership with the Newtown Jets has come to an end, but Flynn stresses there are no hard feelings on either side.

“It was a really difficult decision because the partnership with Newtown has been enormously beneficial for us,” he says.

“At the end of the day, the opportunities that have arisen out of this partnership with the Roosters – one of the best-run sporting clubs in Australia – was just too good to knock back.

“We remain really good friends with Newtown, but this is a new era for Glebe.”