ON a cold and stormy afternoon in Cooma almost 50 years on three local Cooma men Col Adams, Max Venables and Alan Gutterson surrounded by memorabilia reminisced about the good old days of footy.

The men had tales to tell on Monday of their time spent playing rugby league in Cooma between 1955 and 1965 when competition was fierce and the game tough.

Back in the day Cooma had three local teams and formed part of the Group 19, a competition consisting of 19 teams across the Monaro.

Today has seen team numbers dwindle and Cooma join what was the Group 16 competition, which includes teams from the far south coast.

Mr Gutterson said the Cooma Rovers won three premierships that decade, each win two years apart.

"We were premiers in 1956, 1958 and 1960," he said.

"It's a fair effort when you consider there were 18 other teams in the comp that you had to knock out to get to the final."

The stands were packed for the games with newspaper reports at the time reporting over 200 pounds was taken at the gate for one of the games.

"There were so many teams and so much interest in Cooma, they used to charge people one pound to come and watch," Mr Venables said.

"The 56 era was competitive with all the teams in the area," he said.

"Two or three days before a match if you saw someone from the opposite team in the street you wouldn't dare talk to them, it wasn't the done thing."

The standard was also high during the time of the snowy boom with many first grade players making the move from the city to work on the snowy.

The rules have since changed but the sentiment still remains that the game was tougher in those days.

"The rules have changed so much and it's a different style of game, but I still think the game was tougher in those days," Mr Gutterson said.

"There were no reserves so if one of your men got hurt then you had to battle on without them,"

"And you had to be hard to get the ball."

There were also different turn over rules, rather none at all it was considered good fortune if you could hold the ball for the entire game.

"There was a saying, while you had the ball they couldn't score," Mr Venables said.