 In 2018 Thames Valley won their first Heartland Championship by defeating South Canterbury 17-12 in the Meads Cup Final in Timaru (27 October 2018)

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).