The Johnsonville Rugby Club has been involved with Wellington rugby for 112 years.

Our clubrooms and home ground are situated in Helston Road, Johnsonville at Helston Park.

We also use Alex Moore Park and Newlands Park as home venues.

Our club has a number of teams to choose from. We have 2 senior grade teams and one age-grade team, in our under-21 Colts.

We also have an Under-85 team and two social teams, the Cripples and the Grizzlies, who play in the reserve and presidents grades respectively.

Johnsonville rugby has links to two colleges in our area, Newlands College and Onslow College.

Johnsonville has been fortunate to have had players move on to higher honours from within our teams. Chris Masoe became our club's first All Black and we have had players represent Fiji, Manu Samoa, Tonga, Canada, Croatia and the Black Ferns.

We have also had players in the Hurricanes, Lions, Wellington B, Wellington Under-21s, Wellington Under-19s, Wellington Maori, Wellington Samoans and the Wellington Pride.

Johnsonville provides a warm and friendly environment for all players, coaches, manager and supporters. Our clubrooms have bar facilities and also excellent training facilities. We have an Astroturf gym for wet-weather training.

We are more than happy to help find employment for our players and strive to make sure that all involved with the club find it an enjoyable experience to be part of.

Like all community-based clubs Johnsonville has had its ups and downs, first achieving Senior 1 status in 1937 and then losing it several times with the club's nadir in 1967 when it could only field three teams.

A resurgence followed in the 1970s, starting with a climb back to Senior 2 in 1971 and a growth in the number of teams.

This heralded the need for more clubroom, social and training space and the move was made to Helston Park in 1978.

A future planning committee was formed in 1987 which formulated goals for the short and medium term and planned for the challenges ahead. One of these was to win the Senior 2 trophy (Harper Lock Shield) and regain Senior 1 status in 1990; this was achieved on schedule.

The Johnsonville Rugby Club's major achievement was winning the first-round premier club trophy, the Swindale Shield, in 1998.

However, in the following years we struggled to retain our spot in the top grade and eventually dropped to Senior 1 in 2007 when we won the Harper Lock Shield and retained it the following year.

We regained premier status in 2010 but failed to win a game and dropped back down to Senior 1 last year (2011).

The club has donated two cups to the Wellington Rugby Union, the Ed Chaney Cup and the HD Morgan Memorial Cup, for Senior 2 and 3 competition. The cups were donated in memory of of two life members of the club and both men were also active members of the WRFU of which Mr Morgan was made a life member.