As reported in the Moonee Valley Weekly last month, rugby league support in the area is being led by retired AFL player Ross Christensen with a view to establishing a junior team by next year.

Should the push for a team yield a senior side by 2013, it would be 60 years exactly to the time when Essendon laid claim to being the state's premier rugby league club.

Essendon fielded a rugby league team from 1951 to 1956 in a Victorian competition consisting mainly of military and air force servicemen based in Victoria.

However, it was the re-assignment of Australian National Airways pilot Bob Jackson, a Canterbury-Bankstown player that led to the birth of Essendon's team.

An advertisement in the Essendon Gazette requesting rugby league players attracted a handful of interested Victorians, one of whom was 23-year-old Frank MacDonough.

"The team grew from word of mouth, people we knew, we contacted the RAAF at Laverton and Point Cook and a lot of them were from NSW," MacDonough, now 80, said.

"In all the league ended up with 12 teams. For Essendon, getting a ground was a problem.

"Bob Jackson flew out of Essendon on a trip to Tassie one day on the north-south runway and as he went over Aberfeldie Park he spotted a little piece of land - council said yes and that became our ground."

With the league pulled together in a short time to start in 1951, rugby league was on the rise and was met with staunch parochialism from the Australian Rules establishment.

On two occasions Essendon's players went to Aberfeldie Park on the Sunday after a match to find their goalposts on the ground, sawn down by vandals.

"I talked to a lot of people at that time that hated rugby, Aussie Rules born and bred," MacDonough said.

Essendon's one Victorian premiership came in 1953. But it had other high achievements in the game, such as its contribution of five players to a Victorian team that played France at Richmond Cricket Ground in May 1955.