By Paul Thomas
President of the Victorian Trugo Association
So, your footy team didn’t quite make the expected Grand Final appearance you were hoping for back in March, and cricket is far too abstract for you with stats that daze the uninitiated before anyone has had a chance to reach for the remote. What you really need is some down time from those intense high-profile sports that won’t leave your straits stuck in a Hormuz. Stroll into the world of Trugo. Just saying the word makes you sit up and then gently lay right back down as your sporting world moves into wheely time.
Welcome to the world’s first Trugo column. Here at The Westsider, with help from the Victorian Trugo Association, each edition during the 2026–27 Trugo season will educate, report, and gossip on all things Trugo. This is the sport’s one hundredth anniversary since it emerged from the Newport Railway Workshops and evolved to become Australia’s number one heritage sport. Not that there is a whole lot of competition in that department. Australians may love sport, but frankly we haven’t had a lot of success in inventing our own. Trugo being a rare exception. Sure, there is Australian Rules football but let’s not get distracted. We are here to talk Trugo.
If you’ve made it this far and don’t know much or anything about the game, you deserve an explanation but let’s make it quick. For more detail think of jumping to an earlier article in the Westsider 19 July 2022 or search Traditional Sports Encyclopedia – Trugo.
Summing up the basics of the game, to play you need a green, not unlike bowls or croquet green but preferably laid by your tradie brother from Warrnambool who likes to kick off the day with a bundy and coke. A mallet, an obvious necessity, perhaps something the more paranoid you might keep next to the bed to deter intruders. Don’t forget the rubber pads on either head of the mallet after all we don’t want to kill anyone.
A set of sawn-off goal posts, something to aim for, no taller than a Scot’s kneecap, nothing too flashy. Then, most important of all, four black rubber rings which back in the 1920s were ‘borrowed’ from the suspension of Melbourne’s newfangled electric railway carriages.
Fortunately, as a more ethical approach kicked in, they were made exclusively for Trugo and Melbourne’s train patrons were assured a smoother ride. The Trugo rings are like sacred objects in the game; you can’t play without them. To know the ring is to know Trugo.
Now take said ring, put it on a rubber mat, and belt it with your mallet in the direction of the goals. If it goes through the goals, you guessed it, it’s a goal, you get a point. It’s as simple as that. Well, I should mention you need to do all this backward, your posterior up, your head down. When you hit it true, it is sporting poetry, a true-go, you’ll hear that beautiful sound of wood on rubber. When you hit it wrong, that’s disappointment in an egg cup. Hit it really wrong and it is a quick trip to the casualty ward. Trugo may not be rocket science but pay attention! Clearly there are a few things missing here but you’ll get the general picture as we travel through the season.
In the Victorian Trugo Association there are nine teams whose personalities will become clearer as we move through the season – providing they don’t lawyer up. If you’re thinking of joining one or entering your own team, do it! Contact the VTA by emailing: trugosecretary@gmail.com
The new season starts this month, so why just read when you can join a team?
This season we have, in order of their finishing place on the 2025-26 ladder:
- Sandridge
- Footscray Gumnuts
- Footscray Doughnuts
- South Melbourne Penguins
- Yarraville
- Port Melbourne
- Ascot Vale
- Brunswick City
- Brunswick.
You could be the signing that takes one of these teams to sporting glory but keep in mind the emphasis is on enthusiasm over skill.
Team player or enthusiastic supporter, stay tuned and join us for the journey this summer. This is your chance to be opinionated about a sport nobody else knows about either. Learn to know your marys from your madonnas, your knockers from your whackers and have a true-go!
