William Bailey

Jerry Bailey is widely regarded as one of the founding fathers of Rugby League in Newcastle, who dedicated his life to the game to help it get established, managing it through its tumultuous war period, helping to bring peace to the code before spending over a decade as a coach.

Bailey was a very talented junior who started playing Rugby Union in third grade for the prominent Carlton club in 1906. The following season he moved to Souths Newcastle, where he quickly rose through the ranks to make his debut in the senior grade. He then made his first senior representative appearance for the Northern Districts team against a Hunter River side in 1907.

The following month he starred in the Grand Final, scoring a magnificent 4 tries for South Newcastle as they beat East Newcastle 27-3.

Bailey was one of 15 Newcastle rebel Union players who met outside the Central Hotel on April 10, 1908, where he produced a cigarette packet with which the 15 players wrote their names on, to confirm their loyalty to the new code. A few days later and the Newcastle club was officially included in the inaugural NSWRL season, which was set to begin on April 20. None of the players knew the rules of the new game and had less than 2 weeks to prepare for their opening game.

Newcastle came up against Glebe in their first match, a side who had been the benchmark in the Sydney Rugby Union scene before switching codes. Bailey scored all of his side’s 5 points as they went down narrowly in an unspectacular game 8-5.

Bailey pipped fellow Novocastrian winger George Cox for a place on the Kangaroo tour in 1908-09 and a week after Newcastle’s last game of the season, he set sail for England aboard the RMS Macedonia on a 6 week journey.

The exhausting tour saw 45 games played, however despite his try scoring prowess and the Kangaroos troubles with scoring points, Bailey only appeared in 3 minor tour games, scoring 3 tries.

Upon returning home, he rejoined the Newcastle side, scoring 9 tries in 7 games as the side reached the semi-finals, only to go down to eventual premiers Souths. The Newcastle club made the decision to fold at the end of that season so as to form their own local competition. Bailey lined up for Souths Newcastle in the competitions debut season. The team were minor Premiers in 1910, but went on to lose the final to Central Newcastle 13-4.

A slowly worsening back injury which he suffered in a game in 1909 started to impact him in later seasons and by 1912, he was playing sporadically, often missing games that were played in wet weather, as the conditions would cause him significant pain.

Bailey enlisted with the Australian army in May 1916, but just 5 months later was discharged, declared medically unfit with suspected lumbago.

He returned to Newcastle and played sporadically in the tumultuous 1917 season, where he took on administrative duties over playing duties.

1917 saw the NSWRL banning the majority of the Newcastle competition for allowing the banned player, Dan Davies, for applying in their competition. The banned parties decided to form their own rebel competition in 1918, which wasn’t administered by the NSWRL. Bailey was appointed the President of the rebel league, thus creating two competitions in Newcastle. He presided over the rebel competition for each of its two years before he worked to unify the two codes in 1920, where Bailey was elected as President. He was then Vice-President for a further 5 years.

Bailey continued playing occasionally during the two rebel seasons, retiring from playing at the end of the 1919 season. After stepping down from administering the game, Bailey turned his hand to coaching in both the Newcastle local competition and the regions representative team in the late 1920’s.

In 1934 he was awarded life membership of the Newcastle Rugby League. He slowly withdrew his involvement in the game to focus on his barber shop where he worked.

Poor health saw him take an early retirement and in 1952, he passed away due to an ongoing illness.

He was later inducted into the Hunter Academy of Sport Hall of Fame alongside fellow Newcastle Rugby League pioneers Stan Carpenter, Ernie Patfield and Pat Walsh