In the early days, Rushworth Football Club was not the Tigers. The earliest record of a different jumper is in 1884, when Rushworth wore a dark blue guernsey with a white star and a blue and white cap for a game against Murchison. In the era before Rushworth joined the GVFA, it seems as though the club had a very stop-start existence, and may have worn a number of different jumpers
Newspaper reports suggest that they changed jumpers with the shift to the Goulburn Valley Football Association. A meeting was held at Dooley’s Imperial Hotel in April 1908 and heard that an invitation had been received to join the GVFA. A motion by Mr A Darby and seconded by Mr H Johnson that the invitation be accepted was carried unanimously. At a subsequent meeting at Darby’s Cricketers Inn (now the bottom pub) it was agreed that the colours of the guernseys be maroon with a gold band. How ironic that Rushworth would initially choose the colours of one of their arch rivals of the modern era - Stanhope.
Sadly, it also has to be reported that Rushworth also wore Collingwood jumpers for a time, and were known as the Magpies. The attached picture (courtesy of Rushworth Historical Society) shows a Rushworth team in Magpie colours, but the picture is undated. Going by the names of the players, over a third of them were playing in 1908, but it is unclear whether the picture was taken before or after that. Rushworth may have worn the black and white from 1904-6 during the short-lived existence of the Waranga Football Association (Murch, Nagambie, Whroo/Moora, Wanalta and Rushworth) or in the two years (1913-14) when Rushworth played in the fledgling Waranga North-East league. If you can shed any light on this please let me know. I would also be interested to see the badge shown on the top left hand corner of the picture so it could be scanned for club records.
Because of the difficulties of transport, early games played by Rushworth Football Club were against teams that were close geographically. There were brief involvements with the Upper Goulburn FL (1897) playing Murch, Whroo and Nagambie, and with the GVFA in 1900 (playing Mooroopna, Murchison, Shepp, Tat and Undera). Local games were also played against such teams as Wanalta, Wanalta/Corop and Waranga Basin, the latter when construction was taking place and there was a big camp near the embankment.
