The wonderful achievements of our Rifle Shooters in the GPS competition, reported elsewhere in this issue, remind us that Rifle Shooting is one of the longest-established organised sports at Newington.

When Rifle Shooting became a GPS sport in 1905, competition between school teams was already well established under the National Rifle Association of New South Wales. The AAGPS purchased the NRA Shield (previously called the Schools’ Challenge Shield) from the Association and adopted the records of school teams dating back to 1885 as GPS records. Thus, Newington’s earliest GPS Rifle Shooting victory — “School Champions at last!”, exulted The Newingtonian — is recorded as 1887, when we won the Schools’ Challenge Shield, along with six other matches and many individual prizes in the same competition.

Both Rifle Shooting and Rugby will celebrate their sesquicentenaries — 150^th anniversaries — in 2019. You can learn more about the start of our many sports, and see historical sporting items not shown before, in a new display. ‘Sporting Starts’, in the Taylor Sports Centre’s Function Room.

David Roberts
College Archivist