Sunnybank Rugby Union Club is an Australian

rugby union Rugby union football, commonly known simply as rugby union in English-speaking countries and rugby 15/XV in non-English-speaking world, Anglophone Europe, or often just rugby, is a Contact sport#Terminology, close-contact team sport that orig ...

club based in the

Brisbane Brisbane ( ; ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and largest city of the States and territories of Australia, state of Queensland and the list of cities in Australia by population, third-most populous city in Australia, with a ...

suburb of Sunnybank,

Queensland Queensland ( , commonly abbreviated as Qld) is a States and territories of Australia, state in northeastern Australia, and is the second-largest and third-most populous state in Australia. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Austr ...

, currently competing in the

Queensland Premier Rugby Queensland Premier Rugby is a semi professional club rugby union competition in Queensland, Australia. Nine clubs play in the competition, eight clubs are from Brisbane, and one club is from Gold Coast.The premiership has been contested in i ...

competition. It was established in 1969 and has won three premierships since it entered.

History

Sunnybank Rugby Union Club was founded in 1969 as a junior

club, in the southern Brisbane suburb of Sunnybank. As a junior club, it was founded on the principle that any boy, no matter how good or bad a rugby player he was, would get a game. And so it remains in the ranks of the junior players at Sunnybank, however the word "boy" has been changed to "child". In its first year, the club fielded an Under 8s team coached by Bill Horsley and an Under 11s side coached by Graeme Page. The club played their home games at

Sunnybank State High School Sunnybank State High School is a public co-educational secondary school located in the Brisbane suburb of Sunnybank, Queensland, Australia. It is administered by the Queensland Department of Education, with an enrolment of 666 students and a te ...

, until 1974, when the club moved to its present home ground of Biggs Field in the nearby Brisbane suburb of Macgregor. The Sunnybank High School colours of black, green and white were adopted and the Chinese dragon adopted as the emblem of the new club. The Dragons went from strength to strength, consistently being one of the strongest clubs in the Queensland Junior Rugby Union competition. The high point of this was claiming the President's Trophy for champion junior club in 1980. In 1975, Sunnybank expanded from being solely a junior club, to being one with more senior players, with the introduction of an Under 19s side in that year. The club then proceeded to field its first Senior team in 1979, with a team playing in the Sub-Districts competition coached by former Souths Magpies prop David McNiven. The club was finally promoted to First Grade status in 1989. Sunnybank had only to wait until 1993 before it made its first appearance in a First Grade Grand Final. The game was lost to Souths, but it signalled a dramatic change in the club's fortunes. Another First Grade Grand Final berth was secured the following year, but again they went down. However, in these two years, Sunnybank produced more than its fair share of representative players, especially in the Australian Under 19s side and the Australian Under 21s side. The mid-1990s saw a drop in Sunnybank's fortunes, with a large exodus of talented players.

Coming of age

However, the new millennium brought another high in Sunnybank's story. A major coup for SBRU was the signing of England Sevens Star

Ben Gollings Ben Gollings (born 13 May 1980) is an English former rugby union player who most recently worked as a rugby coach for Fiji sevens team. Gollings is best known for his time with the England national rugby sevens team. He is the career leader i ...

. In 2005, the Sunnybank First Grade team defeated the

Gold Coast Breakers The Bond University Rugby Club is an Australian rugby union football club that competes in the Queensland Premier Rugby competition. The club is based at the Bond University campus on Queensland's Gold Coast, Queensland, Gold Coast. Bond Univer ...

in the Hospital's Cup Grand Final, to claim the club's first senior top division championship. This performance was repeated in 2007, when once again the Dragons defeated the Breakers in the Premier Grade Grand Final at Ballymore, the spiritual home of Queensland Rugby. 2006 saw the opening of a new main oval and the opening of a new club house. Also the Premier grade team was knocked out in the semi-finals after losing their two props to wallaby commitments. The 2007 season got off to a steady start with wingers Liam Bibo and Karel Bos impressing as with fullback and captain John Dart, towards the end the development of young fly-half Ben Lucas and the return of QLD Reds player Digby Ioanie, Rodney Blake, Greg Holmes, Henari Veratau and Nic Berry saw the Dragons develop impressive form in the lead up to the finals, culminating in an impressive 85–19 Grand Final victory over the Gold Coast, with Ben Lucas hauling a personal tally of 35 points. The club's players were also available for selection to the

Australian Rugby Championship The Australian Rugby Championship, often abbreviated to the ARC and also known as the Mazda Australian Rugby Championship for sponsorship purposes, was a domestic professional men's rugby union football competition in Australia, which ran for onl ...

franchise

East Coast Aces Queensland Country was an Australian rugby union football team that competed in the National Rugby Championship (NRC). The team is one of two Queensland sides in the competition, the other being . Queensland Country is organised and managed by ...

in 2007.

Results

Premier Rugby

Australian Club Championship

Honours

– Premiers: (3)

2005 2005 was designated as the International Year for Sport and Physical Education and the International Year of Microcredit. The beginning of 2005 also marked the end of the International Decade of the World's Indigenous Peoples, Internationa ...

2007 2007 was designated as the International Heliophysical Year and the International Polar Year. Events January * January 1 **Bulgaria and Romania 2007 enlargement of the European Union, join the European Union, while Slovenia joins the Eur ...

2011 The year marked the start of a Arab Spring, series of protests and revolutions throughout the Arab world advocating for democracy, reform, and economic recovery, later leading to the depositions of world leaders in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen ...

– Runners-up: (4)

1993 The United Nations General Assembly, General Assembly of the United Nations designated 1993 as: * International Year for the World's Indigenous People The year 1993 in the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands had only 364 days, since its ...

1994 The year 1994 was designated as the " International Year of the Family" and the "International Year of Sport and the Olympic Ideal" by the United Nations. In the Line Islands and Phoenix Islands of Kiribati, 1994 had only 364 days, omitti ...

2012 2012 was designated as: *International Year of Cooperatives *International Year of Sustainable Energy for All Events January *January 4 – The Cicada 3301 internet hunt begins. * January 12 – Peaceful protests begin in the R ...

2014 The year 2014 was marked by the surge of the Western African Ebola epidemic, West African Ebola epidemic, which began in 2013, becoming the List of Ebola outbreaks, most widespread outbreak of the Ebola, Ebola virus in human history, resul ...

Australian Club Championship – Runners-up: (1)

2008 2008 was designated as: *International Year of Languages *International Year of Planet Earth *International Year of the Potato *International Year of Sanitation The Great Recession, a worldwide recession which began in 2007, continued throu ...

International players

* '' Paul Alo-Emile'' (2017) * '' Greg Holmes'' (2005) * ''

Digby Ioane Digby Ioane (born 14 July 1985) is an Australian professional rugby union footballer who played for the Colorado Raptors in Major League Rugby (MLR). Ioane previously played for Panasonic Wild Knights in the Top League in Japan. He also play ...

'' (2007) * '' Rob Simmons'' (2010) * '' Jake Schatz'' (2014) * '' Liam Gill'' (2012) * ''

Richard Kingi Richard Kingi (born 17 March 1989 in Tauranga, New Zealand) is an Australian professional Rugby union footballer. While his usual position is half back, he often plays on the wing and sometimes at fullback. Career Brought up in Te Puke near th ...

'' (2009) * '' Ben Tapuai'' (2011) * '' Henry Taefu'' (2017) * '' David Giffin'' (1996) * '' Rodney Blake'' (2006) * ''

Nigel Ah Wong Nigel Ah Wong (born 30 May 1990) is a professional rugby union player, who currently plays as a wing for in Super Rugby and in New Zealand's domestic National Provincial Championship. Born in New Zealand, he represents Samoa at international ...

'' (2022) * '' Josh Afu'' (2008) *

External links

Sunnybank Rugby
– Official website {{QSRU Sports clubs and teams in Brisbane 1969 establishments in Australia Rugby clubs established in 1969