Lake Macquarie

The fixtures that matter around Speers Point are rarely the ones with a name attached to them. No derby has ever been formally christened at Lake Macquarie City FC; what the club has instead are the meetings with its Northern New South Wales neighbours that land in the last weeks of a season, when one side is chasing a play-off place and the other is trying to stay up. Those are the games the ground fills for.

The club came out of the coalfields — a group of Scottish miners started it in 1912 — and for most of the century since, its silverware has arrived in short bursts rather than a steady accumulation.

Anyone who saw the side before 2021 remembers it in yellow shirts, blue shorts and white socks — a Brazil kit, more or less, though the socks drifted to yellow over the years. The rebrand of 2021 replaced all of it with blue and white.

Macquarie Field, on Creek Reserve Road, is being rebuilt around a new 200-seat grandstand, which will leave the ground holding roughly 1,000. The premiership is the regular-season prize; the championship is decided afterwards, and that is what the Roosters are playing for.