Group 17 Rugby League


Group 17 is a rugby league competition based in the Riverina and Central West regions of New South Wales, Australia which collapsed in 2006 and reformed in 2018.

History

Rugby league in the district began as an inter-town competition between Hillston, Merriwagga, Goolgowi and Hay. The competition was suspended during World War 2.
It reformed in 1947 as the 'Western Zone' with teams from Hay, Darlington Point, Goolgowi, Carrathool and two teams from Hillston, 'Town' and 'Country'. Tullibigeal joined during the 1950s, and won the 1965 Clayton Cup, the Country Rugby League's highest honour, but later departed to form the TLU Sharks with Lake Cargelligo. Sometime between then and 1965, when Coleambally entered, the league became known as group 17. In 1973, two of the competition's biggest teams, Darlington Point and Coleambally merged and joined the neighbouring Group 20 Rugby League competition. Darlington Point had far outgrown the competition, going undefeated in 1968 to win the Clayton Cup.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the competition sustained a high level of competition, with eight clubs participating. More Clayton Cups were won by Group 17 clubs, with Rankins Springs, Barellan and Hillston all claiming the trophy. But by the 2000s, the Millennial Drought had caused many of the teams to be weakened, due to farming, the primary industry in the region, becoming not only unprofitable, but almost impossible. The competition collapsed after the 2006 season.
The competition was revived in 2018 as the Group 17 ProTen Community Cup, with six teams participating. The format involved at five rounds followed by semi-finals and a grand final. In each round, all three games were played at the same venue.
The competition retained the same format in 2019, with the Grand Final being held in Ivanhoe. The 2020 season is in limbo due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Clubs

Past participants in the Group 17 competition included:

All statistics are post 1966
Bold''' indicates that the club fielded a team in the 2006 First-Grade competition.

Grand Finals