Broadbeach United

Broadbeach's junior club grew into something else in 1975, when it joined the group of clubs that set up the Gold Coast's top men's competition. A senior side followed only in 1980, and it won everything in front of it at the first attempt — league, President's Cup and grand final in the same season.

That start was not an outlier. The club holds the Gold Coast league records for premierships, grand final wins and President's Cups, and the wins are spread across five decades rather than bunched into one good era: 1976 at one end, 2022 at the other. The most complete season came in 2014, when all four senior teams — the Premier firsts, the reserves, the second division side and the women's Premier team — took both the league and the grand final in their own competitions.

Home is Nikiforides Family Park in Broadbeach, on the Gold Coast, a ground of 1,000.

Shane Smeltz began in the club's junior ranks before a career that took in the New Zealand national team and a place among the leading scorers in A-League history.

In 2023 the club stepped up to the Football Queensland Premier League, the top tier of the state's regional competitions. It arrived there without the ready-made enmity that comes with a settled top-division address — the fixture the coast calls its derby, Gold Coast Knights against Gold Coast United, is played above them and without them. The rivalries the Dolphins carry were made in the Gold Coast league, against the sides they beat to those eleven premierships.