Newcastle City Touch Association grounds are located inside the Newcastle Harness Racing Club, Turton Road New Lambton, immediately behind McDonald’s Jones Stadium (see Location page). Our seven fields are all floodlit and we have ample parking in the Northern car park at McDonald Jones Stadium.

Newcastle City Touch Association organises two senior competitions each year. The Autumn competition runs from April to June and the Spring competition runs from August to December. Both competitions are run in the evenings with the first games commencing at 6.30pm.

SENIORS

Tuesday night men’s and women’s competitions
Thursday night mixed competitions

JUNIORS

Junior competition games are played on Monday or Tuesday evenings during spring only, commencing in September and running through to December. Games commence from 4:30pm.

REPRESENTATIVE TOUCH

Players registered in our social competitions have the opportunity to trial for our junior and senior representative teams. These teams play in regional, country and NSW State tournaments. Find out more information under the Representative tab.

Club History

Touch football commenced in Newcastle in 1972. The competition was organised by the Department of Sport and Recreation. Newcastle City Touch Association was formed in 1974 with Peter Rymer elected as  the first club president. Since that year Newcastle City Touch has been organising touch competitions, every year.
In the early 80’s, Newcastle City Touch Association had 293 registered teams in one summer competition with games played on Sunday mornings. The number of teams in that one competition made it the largest single touch competition in Australia, at the time. Newcastle had 16 fields on the outskirts of the International Sports Centre before the Harness Racing Club was established. We now have 7 floodlit fields inside the track of the harness Racing Club at Turton Road Broadmeadow.
Newcastle City touch became affiliated with New South Wales Touch Association in 1983. That year saw Newcastle’s first appearance as a combined division in a country series. The division was made up of Newcastle City, Beresfield, Wallsend and Maitland clubs all of which were affiliated with New South Wales Touch Association. Three Newcastle teams were chosen after selection trials at the then International Sports Centre. They were men’s open, mens over 35’s and womens open. The men’s over 35 contained some players who had made names for themselves in rugby league.

Men’s Open: (coach Mick Gallagher) J. Pitts, C. Friend, C. Lawler, P. Holmes, K. Miller, R.McMahon, W. Olson, (Newcastle) C. Skelton, R. Chillingworth, A. Howard, G. Shields G. Young (Maitland) G.Pegg, D. Boyce (Wallsend)
Men’s Over 35: (coach P. Davis) N. Wilkinson, D. Maddison, K. Campbell, R. Walters, G. Murdoch, G. O’Callaghan, B. Spruce, L. Cox (Newcastle) R. Andrews, A. Hammond, G. Swancott G. Patterson,J. McCarter, G. Walsh (Wallsend) K. Sweetman (Beresfield).
Womens: (coach A. Frost) C. Allcock, S Griffiths, K. Passmore, J. Maddison, J. Ireland, K. Cassidy, J. Johnson,S. Passmore, G. Taylor, J. Rymer, A. Nesbitt (Newcastle)  I.Jennings, T. Towbridge, D. Wellbourne (Maitland) D. Crane (Wallsend)

Newcastle City Touch hosted the NSW State Cup at their fields in 1985, four years before the championships were moved from Sydney to Port Macquarie where they are still being held.
Our first female state representative player was Gai Taylor in 1985 and she went on to represent Australia in 1986.
The first male state representatives were Vince Cronin and Colin Friend in 1986 with Vince being selected for the Australian team later that year.
Newcastle men over 30 team won our first Country Championship in 1987 along with the club championship at those titles and our men 45 team won our first State Cup in 1998.

Since then the club continues to grow and have taken home both junior and senior regional and state titles.

Our junior competition has tripled in numbers since 2017 and provides girls and boys divisions starting from Under 7’s to Under 15’s.