The history of Princes Park Touch

People have been playing informal non contact derivatives of rugby for almost as long as rugby has existed, but it took until the late 60’s for these to be formalised into a sport.

Organised touch however took a lot longer to reach the inner north of Melbourne and it was not until the year 2000 that a formal competition began. When Melbourne University rugby players started a small competition. Playing and helping out in that first competition was a young man who called Peter Shaw, who had just returned from playing rugby in England.

The first competition eponymously called Royal Park Touch was small, Summer only and based in Royal Park in the Bren’s precinct south of the zoo. Due to the great location and pavilion it had slow but steady growth and it was during this time that team that are still running around like Phantoms, Dunneworthy, Goodies, and Pretty Astrid started or joined. In fact Dunneworthy played in the very first competition, joining a few years later was team team called Phantoms (who actually started in 1997) and around that time Goodies and Pretty Astrid were also formed. These four teams are now the four longest running teams in the state.

However the good times were not to last. In 2007/08 council redeveloped the precinct and and said that if touch was to continue the venue was to be Princes Park. Princes Park at the time, however was not the beautiful park we know today.

Simon and Ken and had young families and such stepped aside and it uncertain whether touch would continue on the then rock hard fields which had no facilities or storage to speak of. But after some though Peter Shaw decided to take on the challenge.

The first season was very tough as registrations halved and finding referees was a challenge. As the competition was no longer co located with the rugby club there was very little support from its players. Yet green shoots and omens were even then appearing. In a magnificent and thrilling final Phantoms won in a drop off in the dark over a MURFC team. In a twist of fate two players from the opposition that day are now Phantoms stalwarts.

In 2007-08 the recovery had begun and a new team that is still with us today, Easy Touch Tiger joined the social competition. Captained by Duncan Brown they were immediately competitive and with the competition expanding to three grades in 2008-09 they won the A grade premiership. On that same night Dunneworthy won their first premiership winning the B grade after having lost two A grade and two B grade finals over the previous 7 seasons.

The following seasons saw slow growth but also the appearance of club teams in the social competition. This was a bit off putting to the some of the longer standing teams who viewed training as cheating. Yet the true park teams fro PPT held their own even if it was frustrating to lose to stacked teams that train in finals.

In 2012 an even larger change occured as Peter Shaw secured grounds at JJ Holland Park in Kensington for touch to start for the first time in the inner north over Winter.

Notable however was Dunneworthy’s first A grade premiership in 2012-13. Rolling the Vipers in a famous semi final boilover.