Once played with rubber train buffers inside carriages, trugo now takes place on grass, as with lawn bowls. The aim of the game is to hit a rubber ring through one’s legs with a wooden mallet, down a pitch the length of a train carriage and between two posts the width of a train carriage. Played one-on-one, the striker’s opponent collects the ring in a canvas bag (kerosene tins were originally used) if it is hit through the posts.

At its peak, there were 17 trugo clubs in Victoria, but that number has dwindled to seven, as participation among younger people has fallen.

But Gerald Strachan, the 74-year-old president of the Brunswick Trugo Club, says the sport can survive if people will give it a chance. “For one reason or another, people don’t want to play it,” he says. “But when they do turn up and have a hit, they really enjoy it.

“It’s good for young people who have good eyes and for the older people, what are you going to do when you retire? Sit at home and do nothing?

“There are some blokes who are over 90 still having a hit, and we’re not out there to win sheep stations.’’

For the past 20 years, Strachan has been playing trugo at the Brunswick club, which was founded in 1942. His interest in the game was piqued when he noticed trugo scores in the local paper.

“I thought I should go down and watch, but I never did,” he says. “But this one day we were drinking down at the pub and this bloke said, ‘What are you blokes doing?’ And we said, ‘Nothing’.

“And he said, ‘Well, how about you come down and play trugo’ and so we did, and I loved it and I’ve done it ever since.”

The name “trugo” came from the catch-cry when a goal was scored. “If someone got it through the posts his opponent would yell, ‘That’s a true go!’ and that’s how the name came about.”

It’s one of the few unequivocally Australian sports, as “footy was devised from rugby”, says Strachan. Trugo featured in American chef Anthony Bourdain’s travel and food show No Reservations in 2009, when Bourdain challenged MasterChef judge Matt Preston to a match. “They used to play it up through the country as well… but now it’s a dying sport because we can’t get players,” he says.

Strachan says the game is for everyone, male or female, young and old. “Everyone who plays it loves it.”

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