The isolated township of Tarcoola was named after the 1893 Melbourne Cup winner of the same name. Football was first played in Tarcoola in the very early 1900s with Tarcoola and Tarcoola Centrals playing matches against each other. For a very brief period during the 1930s, there were enough footballers available to form an association. The North West Goldfields Football Association was formed with two Tarcoola based teams, Outsiders and Railways joined by Glenloth a team from the outlying goldfields. Glenloth was the dominant team in the competition and went through the entire 1935 season without losing a match. This included a match against a combined Tarcoola team late in the season which they won by 32 points.
The South Australian Governor, Sir Winston Dugan attended a Glenloth training session midway through the season. The English born Governor initially thought he was witnessing a soccer demonstration and become more interested when the intricacies of Australian Rules football were explained to him. The association folded after only one season but Tarcoola played games against teams such as Kingoonya up until WWII.