The Ipswich Jets are an Australian rugby league football club based in Ipswich, Queensland. Their name comes from nearby RAAF Base Amberley, one of the largest airbases in Australia. The Jets compete in the Queensland Cup competition. Originally in the 1980s their colours were green and white, but in recent years gold has been added to the combination.
History
Ipswich were one of the earliest teams to join the Queensland Rugby League after it was founded as the Queensland Amateur Rugby Football League in 1909. Ipswich even contested two of the QARFL's first three grand finals, winning the title in its first year in the competition in 1910. But a long absence from the competition started shortly thereafter, and Ipswich was not represented in Queensland's top league again until the mid-1980s.
From 1982 to 1985, an Ipswich representative team competed in the statewide comps. The following year, an Ipswich team was introduced to the Brisbane Rugby League premiership. They were coached in the 1980s by legendary Australian halfback Tommy Raudonikis. The team's most famous product was Allan Langer, who in 1987 was selected to play halfback for the Queensland State of Origin team while playing for the Jets in the Brisbane Rugby League premiership, even though he was not as yet playing in the New South Wales Rugby League's Winfield Cup which was, at that time, fast becoming the premier rugby league competition in the world.
Kerrod and Kevin Walters also played for the club with Langer in their early years. When all three played together for the Brisbane Broncos later, they were dubbed "the Ipswich connection". Kevin later returned to coach the Queensland Cup side in the mid-2000s before moving to Europe to coach in the Super League. Their brother, Steve Walters, played originally for Booval Swifts in the Ipswich Rugby League.
Ipswich continued playing in the Queensland Cup when it was founded in 1997. In the 2007 Queensland Cup, the Jets caused a surprise by upsetting many of their more fancied rivals and pressing for a semi-finals spot, when they had been predicted by most tipsters to finish last.
At the end of the 2008 Queensland Cup preliminary rounds, Ipswich finished four points clear at the top of the ladder, winning their first-ever Queensland Cup minor premiership. As Kevin Walters moved to Europe to pursue a career coaching in the Super League, his assistant and former teammate at both the Canberra Raiders and the Broncos, Glenn Lazarus, was promoted to head coach.
Brothers Ben and Shane Walker who assisted Lazarus in 2009 and 2010 have been appointed co-head coaches in 2011, 2012 and again in 2013. Shane played 149 games for the Broncos and South Sydney from 1996 to 2006, while Ben 135 NRL games for Brisbane, Northern Eagles, Manly Sea Eagles and South Sydney between 1995 and 2006, as well as 44 games for the London Broncos (1995–96) and the Leeds Rhinos (2002). Ben was the NRL's leading point scorer in 2001 when he scored 279 points (18 tries, 103 goals and 1 field goal) in his only season with the Northern Eagles.
In 2020, after nine seasons in charge, the Walker brothers left the club. They were replaced by former Jets' captain Keiron Lander.[1]
