‘Pretty easy to convince them’: How a group of mates helped revive the Warren Bulldogs

After being forced to drive hours just to play footy, a group of teenagers have helped bring their hometown club back to life.

The Warren Bulldogs will return to senior football after eight years in the wilderness. Picture: supplied

Getting the Warren Bulldogs rugby league club back up and running again had been one of Braith Boyd’s pipe dreams for a while.

Whether over a couple of beers with mates or cruising the highway on the near two-hour round trip from Warren to Nyngan just to get to training and games, the thought of reviving his hometown club was a recurring topic for the 19-year-old.

And now, after plenty of kilometres on the road, some excellent community co-operation and a ton of hard work behind the scenes, the Bulldogs are spectacularly set to return to senior footy after eight years in the wilderness, with the club to compete in this year’s Castlereagh League competition.

“It had been a talking point for two years or so,” said Boyd. “A few of us younger fellas had been over playing footy in Nyngan. It was good but we thought that if we could eliminate the travel and get some Saturday games it’d be good to see Warren have a bit of a run around.”

Harry Hammond, vice-president Adam Pascoe and captain-coach Braith Boyd were instrumental in reviving the Bulldogs. Picture: supplied

While any effort to revive a sporting club after close to a decade out of action is impressive in itself, the fact that the driving force behind Warren’s return was a bunch of teenagers makes it even more impressive.

“I’d been going over there (Nyngan) since I was 14, same with a couple of others, and we thought that we’re old enough now, we might as well see if we can do it together because it was a shame seeing nothing in the home town.”

And although the impetus came from the young footy players, getting the club back up and running was a whole town effort from the people of Warren, which is located about 100km north west of Dubbo in the NSW Orana Region.

Indeed, after Boyd and his mates gathered enough interest from potential players, a meeting was held at the Warren Golf Club in June last year to see how viable the proposition was. A whopping 56 people turned up, which set the wheels in motion.

“It was pretty easy to convince the players,” said Boyd, who at just 19 has taken on the role of captain-coach. “There was already a core group of boys that I’d played with when I was younger. They were around and weren’t doing anything so I always thought they’d be keen for a run.

“As soon as word got around it was just a domino effect – people were coming in left, right and centre. There’d be four or five blokes from other towns who had interest in it because they’ve got family around. It’s brought in a fair range of interest.”

From here, business people from town reached out to see where they could help behind the scenes. This turned into a committee who put together an application that was accepted by the Castlereagh League in December last year.

Although the town does have a senior rugby union club and Warren Bulldogs junior arm, for league-loving locals the senior Bulldogs’ return will put an end to what president Brett Brouff described as “a very long drought”.

“Everybody’s really excited about it, people are jumping on board. It’s really great,” he said.

“It’s good for the town to just have all the young blokes hanging around again. But we’ve also got 25-30 women for the league tag, so we’ll have both rugby league and the league tag this year.”

And judging by the interest in the community, the excitement is not just being felt by those set to take the field.

“Everyone’s been saying how great it’s going to be to watch a bit of local rugby league again,” said Brouff. “We put a membership package out and people have been buying them everywhere.

“We put all our sponsorship options out on December 9 and they were sold out three or four days later. Every sponsorship deal was taken and everyone seems very keen to get behind it.”

After eight years without it, senior footy will return to Warren on April 12 with the pre-season Castlereagh Knockout, followed by a round one home game against competition heavyweights Cobar at Victoria Park on April 26.

“It’s a bit surreal at the moment but it’ll certainly start to kick in pretty soon. We’ll be in full swing soon,” said Boyd, who after being forced to travel elsewhere to play footy, will finally get the chance to represent his hometown.

“I only ever remember watching them, so that’s another big thing. It’s going to mean a lot to go out there and put that jersey on.”