Monday Milestone: 1980s Rugby League – Canterbury and Parramatta

As we head towards the rugby league finals, the Milestone takes the Delorean forward another decade this week, this time focussing on rugby league in the 1980’s.

This Week in History
1986, September 21
Canterbury win through to the Grand Final to take on arch-rivals Parramatta in the latest chapter of their ongoing battle for supremacy in the 1980s.

There will never again be an era in rugby league like the 1980s.

It was a time when rugby league was in its final amateur days, when the people’s game was still a sport, and had not yet become a business. We look back these days, on that retro era, through nostalgic glasses, to suburban grounds, and daytime grand finals, when times seemed simpler, because they were simpler. They were the halcyon days of rugby league. On Grand Final days, suburban streets were decorated in team colours. Ribbons were tied to car aerials. Bakeries produced colourful concoctions. There was a real community feel that enveloped supporters.

And as a kid growing up in that era, in many households, you were offered a choice of two. You could select the Mortimer brothers, Terry Lamb, Steve Folkes and the boys from Bankstown, or you could pick Mick Cronin, Brett Kenny, Peter Sterling and company from out west. Which did you prefer? Blue and white? Or blue and gold?

Canterbury-Bankstown or Parramatta?

Because in the 1980s until the premiership was hijacked from the national capital at the end of the decade, they seemed the only two real choices.  In the school yard, those of us, wishing to strike out on our own, were looked upon with pity, as though this was a two horse race.

Because by 1986, it really was. Canterbury and Parramatta had already shared every premiership so far that decade, and the latest Bulldogs victory over Balmain, sending them through to the Grand Final that week had cemented it. The Eels of course, lay in wait, and these two adversaries would face off for their fourth title of the 80’s the following week.

And, as we are aware, it would be one of the all-time gripping, and brutal grand finals. Cronin and Price in their farewell match; Farrar’s high shot on Parramatta winger Mick Delroy; Brett Kenny having two tries disallowed; Peter Kelly being a thug and ultimately getting ten minutes in the bin; a single Cronin penalty goal in the first half; the scores tied at 2-2. Then Ray Price’s concussion, after an hour of torrid barrage, another penalty goal with 18 minutes remaining, to give Parramatta a 4-2 lead; Canterubry fullback Phil Sigworth’s sending off for yet another high shot from the Bulldogs; Lamb’s missed penalty goal which would have tied the match; and finally Parramatta hooker dragging down his Canterbury counterpart, in the final seconds when Mark Bugden had looked certain to score….

The sheer brutality intensity and ultimately, closeness of these two clubs highlights just how dominant they were in that era, and for those growing up in those days, how easy it was to fall under the spell of one of these two clubs.

It was wholesome, hard hitting rugby league played by the toughest men of their time. Money had not yet begun to dominate the game, and certainly had not taken rugby league to the brink of destruction.

Of course that era, would come soon enough….

Milestone Five – Notable moments in 1980s rugby league

5. Parramatta win their most recent premiership with the first ever try-less grand final, defeating arch nemesis Canterbury by 4-2.
4. Canberra and Illawarra enter the competition, in 1982. They would be followed by Brisbane, Newcastle and the Gold Coast in 1988.
3. Financially destitute, foundation club Newtown are removed from the competition, becoming the first defunct club since University in 1937.
2. Arthur Beetson leads Queensland out onto Lang Park for the first ever State of Origin match, where the Maroons defeat the Blues 20-10.
1. Ben Elias hits the cross bar, costing Balmain the 1989 Grand Final, ushering in the era of the Green Machine from Canberra.