Thames Rugby Sub Union – Rugby has been played in the region since the 1870s and 1880s.
The Ohinemuri Union was founded at Waihi in 1896, and by 1904 this union was named the Goldfields Rugby Union. It consisted of a number of even smaller unions, but was itself a sub-union of the Auckland Rugby Football Union (ARFU), and was therefore not directly affiliated to the New Zealand Rugby Union (NZRU).[2] Along with a number of other sub-unions, the Goldfields ceded from the ARFU to form the South Auckland Rugby Football Union in 1909.[4]
Several sub-unions split away from the South Auckland Union between 1909 and 1921 to form new independent unions, and in 1921 the Hauraki Plains, Paeroa, Piako, Waihi sub-unions did the same to form the Thames Valley Rugby Football Union (TVRFU). The union was from then on directly affiliated to the NZRU. The Thames sub union, which had remained affiliated to the ARFU up until then, joined the TVRFU in 1951.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thames_Valley_Rugby_Football_Union