The Footscray Gumnuts Trugo team have emerged victorious in the Victorian Trugo Association Grand Final, ending a 39-year premiership drought.
Footscray defeated Brunswick 143 to 128 ending Brunswick’s six-year dominance of the sport.
Gumnuts captain Nick Smith said his teammates were a “bunch of bloody legends” and said the cup was “coming home” after the sport was created in the inner west suburbs in the 1920s and 1930s.
The win came after three years of the club reaching the grand final and tough times, most notably from 2009 to 2015 when it was unable to muster a team.
The club rooms were boarded up, but unlike many now defunct Trugo clubs, Footscray got a second chance due to the efforts of a group of Footscray residents.
Gumnuts player Brent Coupar was the top scorer during the Grand Final, scoring 21 goals out of a possible 24, while Michelle Mercier was the top female scorer for the match, scoring 18 goals from 24 shots.
Taking about one-and-a-half hours to play, Trugo or Tru-Go is played on a grass court by hitting rubber rings with a wooden mallet from one end of the green to goal posts at the other and has been described as a mix of croquet, wood chopping, lawn bowls and AFL football.
The game of Trugo was invented by Yarraville resident Thomas Grieves in 1926, inspired by the behaviour of fellow workmen at the Newport railway yards hitting train components.
By the late 1930s regular games where being played in the Yarraville gardens between teams from around the local area.
In 1940, the Footscray club opened the first dedicated Tru-Go pavilion and green.
Details: www.trugo.org.au
