Sport has always had the power to bring people together.
It builds confidence, friendships, resilience, leadership, and memories that last a lifetime. But over time, many sports have become increasingly specialised, structured, and sometimes intimidating for new players to try.
Offside Tag was created to change that.
Founded in 2023 by former professional rugby league player Chris Borgese, Offside Tag was designed to bring the best parts of Australian sports together into one exciting and inclusive game.
After playing with the Canberra Raiders and Salford City Reds, Chris experienced firsthand the enjoyment, competition, and camaraderie that sport provides. When injury brought his professional career to an early end, it sparked a long period of reflection about how he could stay connected to the game he loved.
Years later, a simple question changed everything:
“What would a sport look like if it captured the fun of our favourite games growing up?”
Drawing inspiration from fun warm-up games played in elite sporting environments, Chris created a game that encourages creativity, movement, teamwork, and freedom.
Offside Tag blends familiar elements from league, union, AFL, netball, soccer, touch and tag into a fun, simple to learn, safe to play, and exciting game for all skill levels and body types.
It can be described as ‘Tag with Forward Passing‘ and known to some as the ‘Ultimate Cross-Code Sport‘.
But Offside Tag is more than just a new sport.
It’s about community.
It’s about giving players from different sporting backgrounds a place to compete together.
It’s about helping young athletes develop transferable skills that benefit their primary sport.
And it’s about creating opportunities for passionate people to build sporting communities of their own.
As Offside Tag grows across Australia, the vision is simple:
Build a positive sporting movement where players, schools, and communities come together through a game that is fun, inclusive, and uniquely Australian.
