Sixty years of
Sunday mornings.

Three teams. Two dollars. One idea.

In 1966, a group of Belrose families started a rugby club. They called it the Belrose Junior Rugby Football Club. There were three teams, and the season fee was two dollars. The next year, they renamed it Wakehurst — after the estate that once covered this corner of the Northern Beaches.

Waste land. A plan. And the will to see it through.

In 1970, the club identified a piece of unused land on Waldon Road — overgrown, unlevelled, and unwanted. They hatched a plan: lease it, grade it, and turn it into a rugby ground. It would take five years just to sign the lease.

140,000 cubic yards of fill. Zero council money.

On 1 August 1975, the club signed a 20-year lease on the Waldon Road land. Construction began immediately. Volunteers moved 140,000 cubic yards of fill across weekends and school holidays. Not a single dollar of council funding. By 1982, the first ground had been seeded and was ready for play.

" They didn't have a clubhouse. They didn't have a ground. They had each other — and eight years to work with.

The first whistle blew on a field they grew themselves.

In 1983, Wakehurst Rugby Park opened for its first season. The ground had been built entirely by community volunteers, at no cost to council. In 1985, the clubhouse reached lock-up stage. The main function room was named the Mike Harley Room in honour of the man who drove the project from the very beginning.

The families who became the club.

Decade after decade, new families found Wakehurst. Children who wore the navy jersey in the eighties brought their own children back in the nineties, then the noughties, then the tens. The ground became a second home — not just for rugby, but for the community that forms around shared Sunday mornings.

" My dad played here. I played here. Now my kids wear the same jersey.

Floodlights, solar, fencing — and a digital future.

In 2018, the club installed LED floodlights — a $61,000 project that unlocked evening training for every grade. In 2022, solar panels went up ($13,000), cutting the club's power bills and setting an example. In 2025, boundary fencing was completed around the full perimeter. The ground that volunteers built is now one of the best community rugby facilities on the Northern Beaches.

The Village Hub. The NSW RWC Legacy Grant. The next chapter.

In 2026, the club turns 60. A Universal Facilities upgrade has been submitted for the NSW Rugby World Cup Legacy Grant. The Village Hub project — a permanent community facility at Wakehurst Rugby Park — is in planning. It's the most ambitious project the club has attempted since the volunteers broke ground in 1975.