New South Wales Suburban Rugby Union
There are around 7,500 players and 55 clubs competing across 6 divisions,[1] making "Subbies" the largest centrally administered rugby competition in the world.The NSWSRU selects representative sides to compete against New South Wales Country for the Maher-Ross Cup, and Queensland Suburban for the Barraclough Shield.Some of these former students wanted to go on playing and, along with an increasing population of new arrivals in Sydney, this led to the start of club football.[4][5] The Senior competition was run by the Southern Rugby Union (SRU, later to become the NSWRU) and had been in existence from 1874, but matches for Junior sides were arranged on an ad hoc basis until after the 1885 season.[7] A new branch of the NSWRU called the Metropolitan Rugby Union (MRU) was formed in 1897 to administer the Sydney competitions and re-organise the clubs along district lines.[5] Most clubs that were disenfranchised in the move to district football between 1897 and 1900 simply went out of existence but a few, such as Petersham, continued playing matches between themselves beyond the control of the MRU and NSWRU.In 1901 the competition was formally organised under the City and Suburban Association, making it the earliest forerunner of today's Subbies rugby.Players and officials died or were injured during battle or as prisoners of war but, as at least a restricted form of the game was continued, rugby union was able to be successfully revived in 1946.