Monday Milestone: 1990s Rugby League – Torn Apart
This Week in History:
1997, September 28
Newcastle upset the favoured many in the ARL Grand Final, as meanwhile Brisbane defeat Cronulla the night before to win the Super League premiership.
The seconds ticked down.
Newcastle attacked the Manly line. Future immortal Andrew Johns ignores field goal calls and heads down a narrow blind side. Suddenly, on the inside, a gap appears, and instinctively, he throws a ball inwards to a fast flying Darren Albert. Albert takes it. He’s through! He scores! Seven seconds left, and the Novocastrians are bringing home the premiership to Newcastle for the very first time…
Question marks will always linger over the legitimacy of this premiership. Newcastle never played Brisbane that year. They never played Cronulla nor the Raiders either. Would they have won? We will never know. These clubs were locked away in another competition in the darkest days of rugby league.
More has been written about the Super League war of the mid-1990s than can ever be described in the Milestone. It was an era that brought the game to the very brink of destruction.
The entire premise, however, was visionary. Built on financial stability, Super League foresaw Sydney super merged clubs, in a breakaway league, funded by Rupert Murdoch and News Limited. Teams were approached, and the Brisbane Broncos jumped on board. News Limited wanted a twelve team competition, with both pay and free to air television rights available, and they wanted to do it with or without the ARL. There was uproar. Ken Arthurson considered this totally unacceptable. A war was coming.
Whilst Kerry Packer’s threat to sue any club not toeing the ARL line, abated the enthusiasm briefly, Murdoch opened his cheque book. Imagine being a part time player suddenly being offered twice your current earnings plus a signing bonus. In such a perishable career with a decade at the most, it’d be difficult to turn away. Would you have done it?
Auckland, Brisbane, Canberra, Canterbury, Cronulla, North Queensland, Penrith and the Western Reds did. When they signed, News Limited began also buying their players. The ARL hit back with threats of representative exile to players who signed. But for the first time, they also began offering inflated contracts for players to stay with the ARL. Rugby league had grown professional.
Overturning a Federal Court decision that determined the ARL owned all rights, Super League, were offered a chance to create a parallel competition alongside the ARL in 1997. So the following year these two premierships existed side by side. Murdoch had achieved his Super League competition. It stood to be a revolutionary change to rugby league.
However, it wasn’t. Two competitions were not sustainable. The cannibalistic nature of such a situation nearly broke the game to its core. Sponsorships were thin on the ground, and teams were going broke. The infighting and bullshit that had engulfed the game for three years were driving the faithful away and on a grass roots level fans wanted to return to watching matches like Canterbury versus Manly, North Sydney versus Canberra.
And ultimately, the ARL champions of that year, Newcastle up against the Brisbane Broncos, who won the solitary Super League competition. Unfortunately no playoff every occurred.
So how legitimate was that first Newcastle premiership after all?
Milestone Five: Notable moments in 1990s rugby league
5. 1992 – For the first time in rugby league history, Allan Langer takes the Brisbane Broncos to victory and sends the premiership trophy north of the Tweed. It would be the first of five premierships over the next nine seasons.
4. 1999 – After a controversial penalty try, the News Limited owned Melbourne Storm (combined from the Western Reds and Hunter Mariners) in just their second year, come back from 14-0 down at half time to defeat the newly merged St George Illawarra for the premiership.
3. 1997 – Darren Albert strolls into score against the much more highly fancied Manly-Warringah team, in the final seconds to clinch the ARL premiership for Newcastle, their first.
2. 1997 – The ARL accept News Limited’s offer of a settlement, and create the National Rugby League, the first united competition, which is still in use today.
1. 1996 – The Federal Court decision allows News Limited to commence the Super League Telstra Cup the following season, complete with ten teams. The ARL would have twelve of their own, and the dual competition would only last a year.
