If nothing else, the Sydney University Football Club are Australian sport’s greatest illusionists and trick-artists. Not even in 150 years have Oxford and Cambridge ruggers managed to escape from their varsity-cloaked Rugby box the way their colonial cousins in Sydney have.

Story written & researched by Sean Fagan for SaintsAndHeathens

The Sydney University Football Club (SUFC) could teach Houdini a trick or two. They have survived reform movements, district rules, code wars and the withering scorn of 21st-century internet forums. Somehow , an academic gown excuses every sin — a self-awarded master’s degree in the art of humbugging.

1863 — ETCHED IN STONE

Let us begin at the ghostly dawn of 1863 Anno Domini. That sacred number is emblazoned upon their club badge, though it is about as reliable as a politician’s promise. In the 1860s the University barely had enough students to field two sides at whist, let alone the traditional 20-a-side football teams of the era.

Contemporary newspapers, our most reliable witnesses, know nothing of any University club in 1863, nor of even football. Varsity students are first recorded playing against each other in 1865 and once against an outside club. The press of 1865–67 clearly identifies Sydney’s football clubs by name, but consistently treats the University as a mere student side — not a formal club — exactly as a modern school team is not considered a “club”.

The first public claim that the SUFC was founded in 1865 came at the annual meeting in 1876 and was reported in the press. Someone had kept a newspaper scrapbook. Yet, if 1863 is to be believed, where were the not-yet-grey-bearded old boys stepping forward to correct the record?

So, there it sits — “1863” — bold as if carved on tablets of stone. History, it seems, can be written by a clever alumnus with a fine needle and a good tailor.

THE BIRTHPLACE OF AUSTRALIAN RUGBY

Around this time every club was simply a “Football Club”. There was no such thing as “rugby union” in the Australian lexicon until 1874 when the Southern RFU (NSWRU) was founded.

In 1870 the University team’s rules were described as based on those of Rugby School — at least for in-house games. Against other clubs and military teams, however, they played a vague mixture of Melbourne rules and “a strange combination of Rugby and other rules”. It was football by pub crawl: enjoy whatever was on tap. Their first match under proper rugby rules did not come until 1870, against newly founded club Wallaroo, who insisted upon it.

The SUFC was formally constituted at a meeting in the Metropolitan Hotel in 1871. They did this so they could stand on equal footing with the Wallaroos. Organising a club in 1863 would have been something spectacular — it was six or seven years before Oxford and Cambridge even contemplated similar moves.

In any case, a University alumni-and-students-only team could never really be considered a club in the normal sense. It was more a fraternal lodge meeting.

FOUNDING THE UNION

In 1874 the Southern Rugby Football Union — later the NSWRU — was born at the Oxford Hotel in Sydney. Wallaroo FC sent invitations far and wide, prepared the documents, and led the charge for uniform Rugby rules.

Eight clubs gathered on 5 June: Wallaroo, Goulburn, Waratah, Balmain, St Leonards, and the schools — King’s, Camden, and Newington. Sydney University was conspicuous by its absence.

Displaying classic academic lethargy, the scholars waited until the meeting was underway before requesting a postponement so they could organise their own meeting to select a representative. Poor form, especially with a delegate from distant Goulburn already present.

The others, showing more colonial courtesy than London ever extended to the absent Wasps in 1871, adjourned proceedings. University joined the later meetings, sent a beardless youth as its representative to the last one, and has ever since been regarded as a founder.

Late to the table, yet first in the history books. The escapologist at work.

MEETING THE THREAT OF VICTORIAN RULES

Even after forming a football club, the Varsity collegiate still could not settle on a code. In 1877 their delegates to the Union proposed rule changes to curb the “relentless scrums” and carrying the ball in favour of more drop-kicking and “football proper”—a thinly veiled push toward Victorian rules or a hybrid monstrosity.

In 1878 they again discussed creating an entirely new code blending Rugby and Melbourne rules. Tried to arrange a match in Sydney against Melbourne FC under Victorian laws until realising as the hosts they had to carry the debt if the tour lost money.

By 1880 they were openly supporting moves to establish Victorian rules in Sydney. Only after the winter of 1880 did the artful dodgers finally commit to Rugby with something approaching sincerity.

It had taken them nearly two decades to choose a side.

PICKING SIDES

By the late 1880s, some wise old owls at the University recognised it wasn’t healthy for the competition if the Students kept winning everything. They proposed splitting into Past and Present teams — hardly revolutionary, as many English schools already did this. As the only university in NSW and Queensland, each autumn delivered a fresh crop of the best schoolboy talent across both colonies.

The “win at all costs” brigade inside the SUFC however prevailed. Instead of a genuine split, the club simply entered two sides in the Sydney premiership. No other club received such indulgence. They even played each other, with both sides famously refusing to wear alternate jerseys. Like a clutch of chickens fighting for a crumb!

This bizarre arrangement lasted four seasons. Fielding teams with grown men probably saved the SUFC from being shunted off into the new GPS competition alongside King’s and Newington.

THE TIME FOR DISTRICT CLUBS

The reform movement of the 1890s gathered unstoppable momentum: district football! Every man for his own electorate. The crusade had sparked in the early 1890s, born from exhaustion at SUFC always winning everything.

By the end, the hypocrisy was glorious. When the push for local-club purity became inevitable, exceptions magically bloomed for University. The club was no more a district side than passengers on the Manly ferry.

Not content to stop at picking “old boys”, SUFC had openly gone in for recruiting non-students, including the star H.D. Braund from Armidale in 1899.

The architect of the district scheme, Lewis Abrams, rightly protested that University had no place in it. But The Australian Star offered a defence woven of pure sentiment: the old University Club had a “charm of its own.” Charm!

Meanwhile, every other existing club was herded over the cliff. University floated serenely above.

In 1900, as part of the bargain to survive the district scheme, they were granted the right to retain their place in the competition, so long as they fielded teams composed of current and former students.

This was actually far more generous than the strict university traditions of good old England, which strictly confined the Oxford and Cambridge clubs First XVs to those currently attending classes.

THE ROYAL AND GILT

Yet that generous 1900 bargain entered into evaporated with the arrival of professionalism.

While Oxford and Cambridge still honour and observe the old First XV undergraduates-only ways, since 1995 the SUFC has welcomed Braund-style professionals by the bucketload and slipped its bounds entirely when it suited them.

Whereas other ancient clubs like Blackheath FC separated into distinct professional and amateur entities, SUFC has instead maintained a carefully curated affectation; they have morphed into a fully professionalised 1st XV outfit, while still draping themselves in the historical trinkets and heritage of their amateur era past.

So the illusion continues. We all still see the badge with “1863” upon it and nod respectfully. Few trouble to consult the yellowing newspapers or history books. Why spoil a good story with facts?

The trick-artist at their best again, leaving the audience applauding and slightly bewildered. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the highest art.

And so the SUFC sails on — a grand old vessel with barnacles of myth upon her hull, patched with exceptions, flying a flag of charm that no reformist gale has ever quite torn down.

In a country founded by convicts who knew how to pick a lock, perhaps it was inevitable that her oldest surviving Rugby club would prove the greatest escapologist of all.

© Sean Fagan