Matthew Corkhill, (Matty) has lived in Boorowa almost his whole life. He loves Rugby Union andBoorowa has won the last two South West Rugby comps and played in the last three Grand Finals. It’s home as we all know it to a couple of thousand people across the district. Known more for its Merino wool and quiet country ways than for anything that reaches the far corners of the globe. It is the place he returned to again and again. And it is the place from which he has built something that now stands on rugby fields from Super Rugby grounds to the training pitches of international sides preparing to be the best in the world in 2027.
His story is one of loyalty — to the Boorowa Goldies, to the craft of working with his hands, to the front row of a rugby scrum, and to the idea that a bloke from a country workshop can still make something the best teams in the world trust. It is a story of hard work that never stopped, of ingenuity born from necessity and passion, and of the quiet, heartfelt belief that if you look after the people and the game, the rest will follow.
He first pulled on a Boorowa jersey at fourteen. Matty said, “My first game for Boorowa I was 14. Back then I played in the second row. It wasn’t easy doing that at that age.” His older brother was already playing first grade for the club. He was a very good rugby player who went on to represent Southwest. For Matthew, the path was clear. “You always aspired to do what your older brother’s done. Well, I did certainly anyway.” When the side was short, he came home from boarding school at St Gregory’s, which was a league school, and filled the gap. Scrums barely existed there the way they did in union. The second row felt like the safest place for a young kid still finding his way. There is no way a 14 year old would get dispensation these days.
He loved rugby league, but he really liked rugby union. At St Gregory’s, union was the lesser played game. Joey’s had the union covered and St Greg’s had the league. When Matthew finished boarding school in Year 10 and later moved into the front row in union, the difference was stark. “It was a baptism of fire going from a league scrum… I got a real tickle up or a real liven up, I would say, it was pretty solid going.” After the first game he was ready to pull the pin. An old hooker called ‘Buckets’, who had been playing the position his whole life, simply told him to stick. “Just hang in there. He said you’ve got the makings.”
Matthew was only small by his own admission for the position — about ninety kilos — and playing tight-head. He watched the technique of smaller front-rowers who had it right and he learned. Back then the engagement came from a distance. You had to get your feet right. It was all on the hit. He mastered it with the help of that old hooker, and he enjoyed it. “You’d still get a touch up. There was always someone pretty solid coming along coming up the straight.” The front row became his place. Years later he would say it with the quiet conviction of a man who has lived it: the front row is a great position. You can put a tight-head prop on the wing if you’re desperate, but you can’t put a winger in a tight-head.
After finishing Year 10 in 1985 he went to Sydney to do his trade. He trained as a machine operator — he joked, “a glorified toolmaker” — with a small family company in Annandale. For three years he played with Hunters Hill in the first-division competition, one step below the Randwicks of the day. The bright lights of the city held him for a while. He had a couple of games for Boorowa when he came home, but the city was captivating. Then, in 1990, he came home for good. That was his first official full season with the Goldies in the old Southwest competition. It was tough — twelve or thirteen sides, early starts, late finishes, and representative duties that began even earlier. He played right through, with one short stint back in Sydney in the mid-nineties to help his old company. He kept going until he was close to forty. The training two nights a week, the Saturday games eventually caught up with him. He stepped off, but the Goldies and the town never left him.
The business grew the same way the rugby career had — steadily, with both hands, solving real problems for real people. When he first came home in 1990 he worked three days a week for Keith Simmons Engineering in Young and spent the other two on the farm. Then the chance came to buy a couple of old machines — a lathe, a spinning machine, a few bits and pieces. He set them up in the back shed at home. From about 1992 to 1994 he worked there. After the short Sydney return he moved the gear into a shed in town. Corkhill’s Engineering opened on the main street on the 7th of July 1995. He was sixteen when he started learning the trade. He is still doing the same work now, decades later.
He still does most of the machining himself. “If I can get away from the counter and get out the back, I do that.” The workshop handles the everyday needs of the district — belts, chains, pulleys, bearings, anything that keeps a farm implement going. Older machinery that no longer has spare parts is a specialty. “Things wear out and sometimes you look at why they wore out and you’ve got to improve it while you’re rebuilding it… You look at it and you go, how do I make it myself? And you solve that problem. I love that side of it too. I love the challenge of being able to do that.
Someone comes to you and they are genuinely stuck because things just typically break while you’re using them, so they’re in a hurry, so you’re under pressure to get it done and we get stuck in and they’re usually very grateful.” That gratitude, and the quiet satisfaction of solving the unsolvable, is the heartbeat of the business.
The Enforcer was born from the same practical spirit and the same love of the game. Around 1996 or 1997 a mate from Yass came to him. The club wanted a scrum machine. Matthew said yes. The only real commercial options at the time were an expensive Dominator or a basic Silver Fern sled from New Zealand. The Yass bloke did not want a Kiwi machine. He wanted one made in Australia. Matthew redesigned it, built one for Yass and one for Boorowa. Then an old hooker from West Rugby in Canberra heard about it. Matthew went to see him. The response was emphatic.
“I’m not buying a bloody Kiwi machine, no way am I doing that.” He wanted a seat so he could sit in the machine and look down the line of the scrum, and he wanted wheels so it could be moved in and out. Those two features — the coach’s seat and the wheels — remain central to this day.
Matthew thought further. The old sleds needed ballast weight added and removed depending on the strength of the scrum. That meant weights scattered around the field. He designed a brake system instead — “very, very agricultural” but one that works extremely well. It can stall the best scrums in the world and still have another fifty per cent of braking pressure left. He spoke to Ewen McKenzie, the forwards coach, an ex-player, a World Cup-winning tight-head, and at the time
probably rated the best tight-head in the world. McKenzie said bring it over and we’ll have a play with it. They became the guinea pigs. The Brumbies did not have the money to buy a machine at the time. It was early days in the organisation. Matthew would have liked the money, but they offered something better: they would endorse it and help develop it. “That’s what we did. And it’s been the best thing I’ve ever done. And I’m one of the longest standing sponsors of the Brumbies to date.”
“When you don’t involve money in that transaction like that, things seem to go pretty seamlessly. So we both benefit out of it… The trust thing is a huge thing and word of mouth will sink you or float you, and luckily we have a good reputation, we’ve worked hard to keep a good reputation and that is what has helped us.” The rugby world is small. Players and coaches move all over the globe. A machine that is consistent, durable, and realistic travels with that reputation. Matthew has stayed in constant conversation with coaches, adjusting the bind as the laws and techniques change, always refining. He is still an old front-rower at heart. “I’m extremely passionate about the scrum and I watch it… the reason I know the scrum’s going well is because none of my mates have said anything to me. You don’t get the compliments when it’s good, but you’ll certainly hear about it if it’s bad.”
Safety has always been part of the design, because he knows what it feels like when eight men are shoving and you are committed. The open-pad design was a deliberate choice. There is no horseshoe pad that a player might go head-first into if something goes wrong. A hooker whose arms are bound to his props needs to be able to pull out. “I want players to feel as though they’re safe when they use the machine… the front row is a great position. If you can master it, there’s no better position on the paddock as far as I’m concerned.” The pads are width-adjustable for juniors as well as seniors. The resistance system is controllable. The machine is made to feel like the real thing without being unrealistically comfortable. It is still a contact sport.
Patents cost money to lodge and a lot more to enforce. It is better to keep improving, stay ahead, sponsor the right people, and help the game. Service is part of that. When a Darwin club rang about a broken cable on a machine bought in 2018, he sent two new cables free of charge. “Little things like that go a long way. And when you genuinely love the scrum and love the game, you want it to be improved… You want our machine. We want them to be used and we want our scrum to improve on the world stage as well.”
In 2027 matches will be played in Townsville, Brisbane, Newcastle, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. Enforcer was asked to tender. The document was comprehensive — environmental standards, ethical supply chains. He joked “Really the only slave is me, because I own the business.” A friend helped put the paperwork together. There were meetings with people from around the world. Being based in the southern hemisphere, far from many northern competitors, and having the right people already using the machines, helped.
Everything possible is still made in the Boorowa workshop. Steel comes in, the staff bend it and weld it. Upholstery and powder-coating are done in Young. The rest is local. The range has grown to include the popular Pro Simulator with its dual spiked-roller braking system, the AstroMax for artificial surfaces, Heavy Duty and Lite sleds, single-person machines, head-to-head trainers, and other specialised equipment. All of it carries the same philosophy: realistic pressure, adjustable for different levels, built to last, and designed by someone who has packed into the front row and understands what safety and performance actually feel like.
Matthew Corkhill never left Boorowa for long. He could have chased bigger workshops or city opportunities. He stayed. The Goldies, the town, the farmers who need a part made yesterday, the coaches who ring for advice, the young players who need to feel safe in the front row — these are the things that matter. The Enforcer is the visible result of that life: a machine born from a mate’s request, refined with the help of the Brumbies, improved year after year by a man who still watches every scrum with a critical eye, and now trusted to train the teams that will contest a World Cup on home soil.
It is a story of hard work that started in a back shed and never stopped. It is a story of ingenuity that turned a simple sled into a global standard. It is a story of loyalty to a small club and a small town that somehow reaches the biggest stages of the game. And at its heart it is the story of a front-rower who simply wanted to make the scrum better, safer, and more Australian — and who kept doing it, day after day, in the workshop on Corcorans’ Court in Boorowa.
Some say Rugby in Australia has been in a somewhat dark place since Eales kicked the goal to win the Bledisloe all those year ago. Struggled, gone downhill a bit, but persisted. Come good, bought talent, lost talent, taught skills and trained another generation. The Wallabies went down in 2003 to the English after claiming the 1999 World Cup. Last Sunday’s scrum, some 23 years later held its ground against a very strong South African side, and for the first time in a long time, us convicts were down four men in a ridiculous display of refereeing where he nearly brought them (SA) back in to the match got the win. Backs filled in for forwards and packed down at the back and the side of the scrum and one felt that Les Kiss is a Coach who leaves little to chance was ready to commence his career with a bang.. They would have honed their skills on an Enforcer out of a Boorowa workshop, built by a local legend and his team to the highest specs, so that when the backs were needed in the forwards they could do a job. And, they did their job.
A loss on Saturday would have meant doom for ticket sales for World Cup 2027 and Australia’s best 11 players at one stage held out men genetically blessed and known as the Bomb Squad. Matthew Corkhill lit the fuse all those years ago on the Enforcer Rugby Scrum Machine from Boorowa. Now with a whole host of new machines and apparatus he has detonated his idea, now global, now varied, now outside the box. Inherently Gold.
Matthew Corkhill is well aware of the fact the Boorowa Goldies’ team song is a Heart of Gold by Neil Young. It couldn’t fit his ethos for his Enforcer or the way he goes about his business any better. He’s been a miner for a heart of Gold. He has a heart of Gold.
Heart of Gold
I want to live
I want to give
I’ve been a miner
For a heart of gold
It’s these expressions
I never give
That keep me searching
For a heart of gold
And I’m getting old
Keep me searching
For a heart of gold
And I’m getting old
I’ve been to Hollywood
I’ve been to Redwood
I crossed the ocean
For a heart of gold
I’ve been in my mind
It’s such a fine line
That keeps me searching
For a heart of gold
And I’m getting old
Keeps me searching
For a heart of gold
And I’m getting old
Keep me searching
For a heart of gold
You keep me searching
And I’m growing old
Keep me searching
For a heart of gold
I’ve been a miner
For a heart of gold
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