Rugby league in Australia
Encyclopedia
Rugby league football is one of the most popular sports in Australia. It is the dominant winter sport on the eastern seaboard of Australia, including the states of New South Wales
and Queensland
as well as the Australian Capital Territory
, which together comprise around half of the country's population. It is the most watched sport on Australian television, with an aggregate audience of 128.5 million viewers in 2009. The elite club competition is the National Rugby League
(NRL), which features ten teams from New South Wales
, three teams from Queensland
, and one team each from Victoria
, Australian Capital Territory
and New Zealand
.
Australia has a rich history of rugby league, first taking up the sport in 1908 alongside people in Britain
and New Zealand
. The rule changes over the decades that have made it evolve into a different game to the existing rugby football have been partly instigated in Australia as well. The country has been dominant over the other rugby league-playing nations for many years, but enjoys a strong rivalry with New Zealand
.
Commonly known "League" or simply "football
", and sometimes referred to as "the greatest game of all", it is traditionally seen as a "working man's sport" with its roots in the working class communities of Northern England
, compared to rugby union
which has its roots in prestigious English public schools
. The Australian Rugby League
, the sport's governing body in Australia, is working on ways to expand rugby league's popularity across political and social borders.
game" arrived in Australia it was fundamentally different to Rugby Union football, with lineouts, rucks and two players from each team having already been removed, and the play-the-ball introduced to hasten the game's flow.
A similar schism to that which occurred in England
, and for similar reasons, opened up in the rugby union
establishment of Australia, seeing the term "rugby league" first used for the new game as in the rest of the world. In 1907, at the instigation of the famous test cricket
er Victor Trumper
, at a meeting in Bateman's Crystal Hotel in Sydney, New South Wales, the New South Wales Rugby Football League (NSWRFL) was formed as a professional organisation. Players were immediately recruited for the new game, and despite the threat of immediate and lifetime expulsion from the rugby union
, the NSWRFL managed to recruit Herbert "Dally" Messenger
, the most famous rugby footballer in Sydney at that time. Rugby league then went on to displace rugby union as the primary football code in New South Wales.
Four matches were played in Sydney on the New South Wales Rugby Football League's "Foundation Day" on 20 April 1908 (Easter Monday
) in two double headers. At Wentworth Park
in Sydney's Glebe, Easts beat Newtown
before Glebe triumphed over Newcastle
while at Birchgrove Oval in Balmain
, South Sydney
beat North Sydney
and Balmain
beat Wests
.
On 8 May 1909 the first match of rugby league was played in Brisbane
. Past Grammars
played against Souths before a handful of spectators at the Gabba
.
In 1914 and 1915 an amalgamation of rugby league and Australian rules football
was considered and trialled.
The attendance record for a rugby league match in Australia was broken in 1932 when 70,204 people saw Australia play England at the Sydney Cricket Ground
.
The attendance record for a rugby league match was re-set by the 1964 Grand Final between St. George and South Sydney attracting a crowd of 78,065.
In 1967 NSWRFL season's grand final
became the first football grand final of any code to be televised live in Australia. The Nine Network
had paid $5,000 for the broadcasting rights.
The 1993 Winfield Cup Grand Final drew remarkably strong ratings nationwide. and the second game of the 1994 State of Origin series was brought south to the Melbourne Cricket Ground
and re-set the nation's rugby league attendance record with 87,161. This success had set the scene for a truly national competition which eventuated in 1995 with the addition of teams from Townsville, Perth
and even Auckland
in New Zealand
. However the growth of the competition was severely hampered by one of the biggest corporate disputes in Australian history over control of it.
In 1995 Ian Roberts became the first high-profile Australian sports person and first rugby footballer in the world to come out to the public as gay.
The Super League war
was fought in and out of court during the mid-1990s by the News Ltd-backed Super League
and Kerry Packer
-backed Australian Rugby League organisations over control of the top-level professional rugby league football competition of Australasia
.
In 2008, the centenary year of rugby league in Australia was celebrated, with 2008 World Cup
being held and the Royal Australian Mint launching a series of uncirculated coins in November 2007 to commemorate the occasion.
In 2009, rugby league's popularity in Australia was confirmed as it had the highest television ratings of any sport. This occurred again in 2010, with an increased amount of people watching Rugby League (120 million) compared to AFL (112 million).
An unprecedented scandal took place in 2010 when National Rugby League
club, the Melbourne Storm
, was stripped of the premierships it won in 2007 and 2009 for systematic breaches of the competition's salary cap
.
in Australia and also conducts all representative rugby league, including the national team and the annual State of Origin
competition. The Australian Rugby League's major club competition, the National Rugby League
is conducted under a partnership agreement with News Limited
.
At state level, the game is administered by local governing bodies New South Wales Rugby League
and Queensland Rugby League
are members of the ARL whilst Northern Territory Rugby League
, South Australian Rugby League
, Tasmanian Rugby League
, Victorian Rugby League
and Western Australia Rugby League
have Affiliate state status.
New South Wales has a second governing body, the New South Wales Country Rugby League
(NSWCRL) to govern the sport outside the Sydney metropolitan area
. In spite of its name, NSWCRL also governs rugby league in the Australian Capital Territory
.
The elite professional rugby league club competition in Australia is the National Rugby League
(NRL). The NRL's Telstra Premiership is contested by 3 teams from Queensland, 10 from New South Wales, 1 from Victoria and 1 from the Australian Capital Territory as well as 1 team from New Zealand.
Underneath the NRL, semi-professional competitions such as the Queensland Cup
, New South Wales Cup and NSWRL Jim Beam Cup
are run in both New South Wales and Queensland. These competitions are the major feeder competitions for the NRL competition. Alongside these mainly metropolitan-based competitions country rugby league bodies run competitions throughout rural Queensland and New South Wales. Amateur competitions are run in the Affiliated states other than Tasmania where competitions ceased in 2004.
, with total attendances reaching 3,061,893. Six clubs averaged over 20,000 in that year, a feat still unmatched. This was a large increase on the previous years and was no doubt due to the formation of several new clubs and the renaming of the competition, from the New South Wales Rugby League (NSWRL) to the Australian Rugby league (ARL).
The year of 1996 was a turbulent one for Australian rugby league and saw what may be the largest decrease in attendance ever (2,450,776, down 611,117 down from 1995) in the ARL. This crowd decrease is attributed to the poor publicity surrounding the ongoing court cases related to Super League. When the SL competition was introduced in 1997 and played alongside the ARL competition it attracted 1,111,189. The ARL for the same year saw slightly higher attendances of 1,308,824. Subsequent years of 1998, in which the merger of the SL and ARL formed the National Rugby League (NRL) and 1999 also saw increases.
The year 2000 saw club mergers and "relegations" from the NRL. The effective slashing of clubs from the first grade rugby league competition was reflected in the slashing of crowd figures as fans became disgruntled by the club they had supported for many years being torn apart.
Crowd figures did not improve until 2003, with an increase of 249,317 on the previous year, 2002. Figures increased again in 2004 and 2005. The aggregate crowd for 2005 was 2,964,288 and the average crowd figure for regular season matches was 16,468, the highest ever recorded, and 34,710 for play-offs. In 2006, attendance slightly dipped to 2,808,235. An average of 15,601 for regular season matches and 34,163 for playoffs, which was still an improvement on 2004 figures.
In 2007, the number of teams competing in first grade rugby league in Australia increased for the first time since 2002 with the re-introduction of the Gold Coast Titans
in Gold Coast, Queensland
.http://stats.rleague.com/rl/crowds/summary.html(Statistics do not include finals)
In 2010 Rugby League recorded its best year ever in Australia, setting a new all time total season attendance record of 3,490,778 spectators - and with four less teams than in 1995.
is an annual series of three interstate matches between the two strongest rugby league states Queensland and New South Wales. The State of Origin series is one of Australia's premier sporting events, attracting a huge television audience and usually selling out the stadiums in which the games are played.
City vs Country Origin
is an annual Australian rugby league match that takes place in New South Wales between teams made up of NRL players representing 'City' (Sydney metropolitan area) and 'Country' (all areas in NSW outside the Sydney metropolitan area).
The Affiliated States Championship
is an annual competition involving four affiliated states (Victoria, South Australia, Northern Territory and Western Australia) plus representative sides from the Australian Police and Australian Defence Force.
In 2008, 269,377 children played Rugby League competitively in schools. This is a 390% increase from 2002, when the first accurate census of school competition participation numbers. ARLD schools programs have directly involved more than 1,000,000 children in Rugby League-based physical activities by in 2008. In a sign of the game's growing influence, in 2010 over 50,000 Victorian school children attended Rugby League school programs.
The Australian Women's Rugby League
was formed in 1993, which only achieved affiliation with the Australian Rugby League in 1998. This is in contrast to the men's competition which has existed since 1908.
The lack of female-participation in Australian rugby league can mostly be attributed to the predominantly masculine culture which discourages women from playing, and provides little financial or cultural incentive to play.
Despite this, a women's rugby league match in Sydney in 1921 attracted around 30,000 spectators - still a record for women's sport in Australia outside Olympic and Commonwealth Games.
Females account for a large percentage of rugby league's viewing public and the attraction of the game for women partly accounts for rugby league's very strong position in the Australian sporting landscape. Many NRL clubs hold initiatives to foster this relationship. For instance, in 2005 the Canterbury Bulldogs
staged a luncheon for 300 of Sydney's corporate women to raise funds for the Breast Cancer
Foundation, as well as skills development for school girls within the Canterbury-Bankstown district. This follows the increased number of female members to the boards of the National Rugby League and several of its clubs. Manly Sea Eagles also instituted several female directed initiatives, some of which were aimed towards further increasing female spectator numbers.
Not all the perceptions of rugby league being a mostly man game are completely true. At a junior and local level there are many women involved in volunteering positions. Women form a very important part of the local club structures. However, it is not customary for women over the age of 11 to continue playing rugby league against the boys and the exclusively women's rugby league clubs have a relatively small profile in comparison to the local boys' clubs.
Rugby league became the first mainstream professional sport in Australia to appoint a female director to a governing body, with Katie Page, the managing director of retail giant Harvey Norman
, accepting an invitation to join the National Rugby League
's executive board.
The Jillaroos, the Australian National Women's rugby league side, defeated 2008 Women's Rugby League World Champions New Zealand in Auckland in 2009 - thereby ending a streak of 10 years of successive defeats to the New Zealand side.
The injury rates and the public perception of rugby league as a dangerous sport are most likely the catalysts for the introduction of several initiatives by the national rugby league and ARL development in recent years to curb the number of youth playing other sports. The specific initiatives over the years includes a Safe play code, Kids to kangaroos programmes and new forms of modified rugby league, such as, Mod league and Mini Footy to help young children prepare for the full rigours of the international code. Also with such introductions are the competitions aimed at school children such as Joey league, League of legends and League Sevens, which use modified rugby league rules such as Tag and Sevens.
Because of these recent initiatives, junior league registrations have grown climb from 79,000 in 1999 to 120,667 in 2008 while school participation numbers have grown to 269,377. Rugby league gala days, the ARL’s free school clinic program and various club projects “have directly involved more than 1,000,000 children in Rugby-league based physical activities in 2008”.
Rugby league enjoys only minor participation in other states of Australia due to competition with Australia's other premier football league, the Australian Football League and the high junior level participation rates of soccer. Victoria and Western Australia have roughly an equal number of participants with Western Australia higher per capita, though Victoria has experienced remarkable growth in recent years, especially in school based Rugby League participation which registered 33,444 participants in 2008. South Australia has the lowest participation levels for mainland Australia and Tasmania has, by far, the least participants for rugby league in the entire nation.
. Since 7 July 1994 the team's nickname has been the Kangaroos. Prior to that the Australian team was only referred to as the Kangaroos when on tours of Great Britain or France
. They are administered by the Australian Rugby League
and have been the most dominant national side over the past few decades.
, Thomas Keneally
and Kenneth Slessor
have produced literature about the game. References can be found in film, such as Footy Legends
, starring Ahn Do and the 2007 release, The Final Winter
, the story of the Newtown Jets, starring Matthew Johns
. In Search of the Holy Grail also starring Matthew Johns
' Footy Show spin-off character, Reg Reagan featured in the Newcastle Film Festival.
Marketing for the game in Australia has enlisted artists such as Tina Turner
, Tom Jones
and Hoodoo Gurus
to record songs and videos for promotional material.
Several popular TV and radio shows like The Footy Show and Roy and HG's State of Origin commentary
feature the game. There are also many rugby league based video games
featuring the NRL sold worldwide.
All premiership games are broadcast on television, either free-to-air or cable. Online, the ABC
, as well as major newsgroups provide articles on Rugby League, bylined in general by a reporter who is exclusively a sports correspondent. The official publication for the NRL is Big League. Interest in rugby league is highest in the eastern states; as well, many of the large number of Australian expatriates living and working overseas are avidly interested in the season's games, and are able to ensure that they are kept up-to-date by accessing on-line versions of stories provided by major media organisations.
A list of major newspapers which publish rugby league-related stories includes The Australian
, The Courier-Mail
, Daily Telegraph
, The Sydney Morning Herald
, Herald Sun
and The Age
. Matches are broadcast on both Channel 9
, Foxtel
and in New Zealand by Sky TV
.
ABC radio
's Grandstand
program broadcasts live rugby league games on the weekends. Sydney
radio
station, 2GB
, also broadcasts live NRL
matches Friday to Sunday (with their Continuous Call Team
) while Triple M
has exclusive rights to games played on Monday nights.
New South Wales
New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...
and Queensland
Queensland
Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...
as well as the Australian Capital Territory
Australian Capital Territory
The Australian Capital Territory, often abbreviated ACT, is the capital territory of the Commonwealth of Australia and is the smallest self-governing internal territory...
, which together comprise around half of the country's population. It is the most watched sport on Australian television, with an aggregate audience of 128.5 million viewers in 2009. The elite club competition is the National Rugby League
National Rugby League
The National Rugby League is the top league of professional rugby league football clubs in Australasia. The NRL's main competition, called the Telstra Premiership , is contested by sixteen teams, fifteen of which are based in Australia with one based in New Zealand...
(NRL), which features ten teams from New South Wales
New South Wales
New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...
, three teams from Queensland
Queensland
Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...
, and one team each from Victoria
Victoria (Australia)
Victoria is the second most populous state in Australia. Geographically the smallest mainland state, Victoria is bordered by New South Wales, South Australia, and Tasmania on Boundary Islet to the north, west and south respectively....
, Australian Capital Territory
Australian Capital Territory
The Australian Capital Territory, often abbreviated ACT, is the capital territory of the Commonwealth of Australia and is the smallest self-governing internal territory...
and New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
.
Australia has a rich history of rugby league, first taking up the sport in 1908 alongside people in Britain
Rugby league in England
Rugby league football is a team sport in England. The sport receives funding from Sport England as an "English priority" sport. The top-level competition in England—called Super League—is not an entirely all-English affair, as it includes a team from France, and also featured a team from Wales from...
and New Zealand
Rugby league in New Zealand
Rugby league in New Zealand dates back to the very beginning of the sport in England. It is today a popular team sport played in New Zealand with participation and interest considered to be concentrated in the Auckland region. There are around 22,000 registered rugby league players in New...
. The rule changes over the decades that have made it evolve into a different game to the existing rugby football have been partly instigated in Australia as well. The country has been dominant over the other rugby league-playing nations for many years, but enjoys a strong rivalry with New Zealand
Rugby league in New Zealand
Rugby league in New Zealand dates back to the very beginning of the sport in England. It is today a popular team sport played in New Zealand with participation and interest considered to be concentrated in the Auckland region. There are around 22,000 registered rugby league players in New...
.
Commonly known "League" or simply "football
Football
Football may refer to one of a number of team sports which all involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball with the foot to score a goal. The most popular of these sports worldwide is association football, more commonly known as just "football" or "soccer"...
", and sometimes referred to as "the greatest game of all", it is traditionally seen as a "working man's sport" with its roots in the working class communities of Northern England
Northern England
Northern England, also known as the North of England, the North or the North Country, is a cultural region of England. It is not an official government region, but rather an informal amalgamation of counties. The southern extent of the region is roughly the River Trent, while the North is bordered...
, compared to rugby union
Rugby union
Rugby union, often simply referred to as rugby, is a full contact team sport which originated in England in the early 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand...
which has its roots in prestigious English public schools
Public School (UK)
A public school, in common British usage, is a school that is neither administered nor financed by the state or from taxpayer contributions, and is instead funded by a combination of endowments, tuition fees and charitable contributions, usually existing as a non profit-making charitable trust...
. The Australian Rugby League
Australian Rugby League
The Australian Rugby League is the governing body for the sport of rugby league in Australia. It is made up of state bodies, including the New South Wales Rugby League and the Queensland Rugby League...
, the sport's governing body in Australia, is working on ways to expand rugby league's popularity across political and social borders.
History
By the time England's new "Northern UnionRugby Football League
The Rugby Football League is the governing body for professional rugby league football in England. Based at Red Hall in Leeds, it administers the England national rugby league team, the Challenge Cup, Super League and the Rugby League Championships...
game" arrived in Australia it was fundamentally different to Rugby Union football, with lineouts, rucks and two players from each team having already been removed, and the play-the-ball introduced to hasten the game's flow.
A similar schism to that which occurred in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, and for similar reasons, opened up in the rugby union
Rugby union
Rugby union, often simply referred to as rugby, is a full contact team sport which originated in England in the early 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand...
establishment of Australia, seeing the term "rugby league" first used for the new game as in the rest of the world. In 1907, at the instigation of the famous test cricket
Cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...
er Victor Trumper
Victor Trumper
Victor Thomas Trumper was an Australian cricketer known as the most stylish and versatile batsman of the Golden Age of cricket, capable of playing match-winning innings on wet wickets his contemporaries found unplayable. Archie MacLaren said of him, "Compared to Victor I was a cab-horse to a Derby...
, at a meeting in Bateman's Crystal Hotel in Sydney, New South Wales, the New South Wales Rugby Football League (NSWRFL) was formed as a professional organisation. Players were immediately recruited for the new game, and despite the threat of immediate and lifetime expulsion from the rugby union
Rugby union
Rugby union, often simply referred to as rugby, is a full contact team sport which originated in England in the early 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand...
, the NSWRFL managed to recruit Herbert "Dally" Messenger
Dally Messenger
Herbert Henry "Dally" Messenger was an Australian rugby union and rugby league footballer, recognised as one of the greatest ever players in either code. Messenger, or 'The Master' as he was dubbed, represented his country in both rugby football codes, playing two rugby union tests and seven...
, the most famous rugby footballer in Sydney at that time. Rugby league then went on to displace rugby union as the primary football code in New South Wales.
Four matches were played in Sydney on the New South Wales Rugby Football League's "Foundation Day" on 20 April 1908 (Easter Monday
Easter Monday
Easter Monday is the day after Easter Sunday and is celebrated as a holiday in some largely Christian cultures, especially Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox cultures...
) in two double headers. At Wentworth Park
Wentworth Park
Wentworth Park is a multi-purpose sporting facility in the suburb of Glebe in New South Wales, Australia.that is used for various sports including rugby union, rugby league, soccer and greyhound racing. Wentworth Park is located 2 kilometres from the Sydney central business district...
in Sydney's Glebe, Easts beat Newtown
Newtown Jets
The Newtown Jets are an Australian rugby league football club based in Newtown, a suburb of Sydney's inner west. They currently compete in the NSWRL Premier League competition, having left the top grade after the 1983 NSWRFL season...
before Glebe triumphed over Newcastle
Newcastle Rebels
Newcastle were a rugby league team who played in the New South Wales Rugby Football League premiership from 1908–1909, one of the nine foundation clubs. After the formation of several clubs in January 1908, members of the NSWRFL came to Newcastle to hold talks with the local footballing community...
while at Birchgrove Oval in Balmain
Balmain, New South Wales
Balmain is a suburb in the inner-west of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Balmain is located slightly west of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the Municipality of Leichhardt....
, South Sydney
South Sydney Rabbitohs
The South Sydney Rabbitohs are an Australian professional rugby league football team based in Redfern, a suburb of South-central Sydney, New South Wales. They participate in the National Rugby League premiership and are one of nine existing teams from the state capital...
beat North Sydney
North Sydney Bears
The North Sydney Bears are an Australian rugby league football club based in North Sydney, New South Wales. They currently compete in the New South Wales Cup, having exited the National Rugby League following the 1999 NRL season after 92 years of top-grade competition. The Bears are based on...
and Balmain
Balmain Tigers
The Balmain Tigers are a rugby league football club based in the inner-western Sydney suburb of Balmain. They were a founding member of the New South Wales Rugby League and one of the most successful in the history of the premiership, with eleven titles...
beat Wests
Western Suburbs Magpies
The Western Suburbs Magpies are an Australian rugby league football club based in the western suburbs of Sydney, New South Wales. Formed in 1908, Wests, as they are commonly referred to, were one of the nine foundation clubs of the first New South Wales Rugby League competition in Australia...
.
On 8 May 1909 the first match of rugby league was played in Brisbane
Brisbane
Brisbane is the capital and most populous city in the Australian state of Queensland and the third most populous city in Australia. Brisbane's metropolitan area has a population of over 2 million, and the South East Queensland urban conurbation, centred around Brisbane, encompasses a population of...
. Past Grammars
Norths Devils
The Northern Suburbs Devils, Norths for short, are a rugby league club representing the northern suburbs of Brisbane, Australia. The team colours are sky blue, navy blue and gold. They play in the Queensland Wizard Cup, and, through their predecessors, are one of the oldest clubs in...
played against Souths before a handful of spectators at the Gabba
Brisbane Cricket Ground
The Brisbane Cricket Ground, commonly known as The Gabba, is a major sports stadium in Brisbane, the capital of Queensland. It is named after the suburb of Woolloongabba, in which it is located....
.
In 1914 and 1915 an amalgamation of rugby league and Australian rules football
Australian rules football
Australian rules football, officially known as Australian football, also called football, Aussie rules or footy is a sport played between two teams of 22 players on either...
was considered and trialled.
The attendance record for a rugby league match in Australia was broken in 1932 when 70,204 people saw Australia play England at the Sydney Cricket Ground
Sydney Cricket Ground
The Sydney Cricket Ground is a sports stadium in Sydney in Australia. It is used for Australian football, Test cricket, One Day International cricket, some rugby league and rugby union matches and is the home ground for the New South Wales Blues cricket team and the Sydney Swans of the Australian...
.
The attendance record for a rugby league match was re-set by the 1964 Grand Final between St. George and South Sydney attracting a crowd of 78,065.
In 1967 NSWRFL season's grand final
Grand Final
Grand Final is a predominantly Australian sport term used to describe a match that decides a league champion.It originated in Victoria and South Australia and has become specifically significant Australian culture...
became the first football grand final of any code to be televised live in Australia. The Nine Network
Nine Network
The Nine Network , is an Australian television network with headquarters based in Willoughby, a suburb located on the North Shore of Sydney. For 50 years since television's inception in Australia, between 1956 and 2006, it was the most watched television network in Australia...
had paid $5,000 for the broadcasting rights.
The 1993 Winfield Cup Grand Final drew remarkably strong ratings nationwide. and the second game of the 1994 State of Origin series was brought south to the Melbourne Cricket Ground
Melbourne Cricket Ground
The Melbourne Cricket Ground is an Australian sports stadium located in Yarra Park, Melbourne and is home to the Melbourne Cricket Club. It is the tenth largest stadium in the world, the largest in Australia, the largest stadium for playing cricket, and holds the world record for the highest light...
and re-set the nation's rugby league attendance record with 87,161. This success had set the scene for a truly national competition which eventuated in 1995 with the addition of teams from Townsville, Perth
Perth, Western Australia
Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia and the fourth most populous city in Australia. The Perth metropolitan area has an estimated population of almost 1,700,000....
and even Auckland
Auckland
The Auckland metropolitan area , in the North Island of New Zealand, is the largest and most populous urban area in the country with residents, percent of the country's population. Auckland also has the largest Polynesian population of any city in the world...
in New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
. However the growth of the competition was severely hampered by one of the biggest corporate disputes in Australian history over control of it.
In 1995 Ian Roberts became the first high-profile Australian sports person and first rugby footballer in the world to come out to the public as gay.
The Super League war
Super League war
The Super League war is the common name given to the corporate dispute that was fought in and out of court during the mid-1990s between the Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation-backed Super League and the Kerry Packer and Optus Vision-backed Australian Rugby League organisations over broadcasting...
was fought in and out of court during the mid-1990s by the News Ltd-backed Super League
Super League
Super League is the top-level professional rugby league football club competition in Europe. As a result of sponsorship from engage Mutual Assurance the competition is currently officially known as the engage Super League. The League features fourteen teams: thirteen from England and one from...
and Kerry Packer
Kerry Packer
Kerry Francis Bullmore Packer, AC was an Australian media tycoon. The son of Sir Frank Packer and Gretel Bullmore, the Packer family company owned controlling interest in both the Nine television network and leading Australian publishing company Australian Consolidated Press, which were later...
-backed Australian Rugby League organisations over control of the top-level professional rugby league football competition of Australasia
Australasia
Australasia is a region of Oceania comprising Australia, New Zealand, the island of New Guinea, and neighbouring islands in the Pacific Ocean. The term was coined by Charles de Brosses in Histoire des navigations aux terres australes...
.
In 2008, the centenary year of rugby league in Australia was celebrated, with 2008 World Cup
2008 World Cup
2008 World Cup can refer to:*The 2008 Rugby League World Cup*The 2008 Alpine Skiing World Cup*The 2008 VIVA World Cup*The 2008 Speedway World Cup*FIFA Futsal World Cup 2008*FIFA Club World Cup 2008-See also:...
being held and the Royal Australian Mint launching a series of uncirculated coins in November 2007 to commemorate the occasion.
In 2009, rugby league's popularity in Australia was confirmed as it had the highest television ratings of any sport. This occurred again in 2010, with an increased amount of people watching Rugby League (120 million) compared to AFL (112 million).
An unprecedented scandal took place in 2010 when National Rugby League
National Rugby League
The National Rugby League is the top league of professional rugby league football clubs in Australasia. The NRL's main competition, called the Telstra Premiership , is contested by sixteen teams, fifteen of which are based in Australia with one based in New Zealand...
club, the Melbourne Storm
Melbourne Storm
The Melbourne Storm are an Australian professional rugby league club based in the city of Melbourne. They are the first fully professional rugby league team based in the Australian rules football-dominated state of Victoria....
, was stripped of the premierships it won in 2007 and 2009 for systematic breaches of the competition's salary cap
Salary cap
In professional sports, a salary cap is a cartel agreement between teams that places a limit on the amount of money that can be spent on player salaries. The limit exists as a per-player limit or a total limit for the team's roster, or both...
.
Governing body
The Australian Rugby League is the governing body for the sport of rugby leagueRugby league
Rugby league football, usually called rugby league, is a full contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular grass field. One of the two codes of rugby football, it originated in England in 1895 by a split from Rugby Football Union over paying players...
in Australia and also conducts all representative rugby league, including the national team and the annual State of Origin
Rugby League State of Origin
State of Origin is an annual best of three series of rugby league football matches contested by the Maroons and the Blues, who represent the Australian states of Queensland and New South Wales respectively...
competition. The Australian Rugby League's major club competition, the National Rugby League
National Rugby League
The National Rugby League is the top league of professional rugby league football clubs in Australasia. The NRL's main competition, called the Telstra Premiership , is contested by sixteen teams, fifteen of which are based in Australia with one based in New Zealand...
is conducted under a partnership agreement with News Limited
News Limited
News Limited is one of Australia's largest diversified media companies. The publicly listed company's interests span newspaper and magazine publishing, Internet, Pay TV, National Rugby League, market research, DVD and film distribution, and film and television production trading assets.News Limited...
.
At state level, the game is administered by local governing bodies New South Wales Rugby League
New South Wales Rugby League
The New South Wales Rugby League is the governing body of rugby league in New South Wales and is a member of the Australian Rugby League. It was formed in Sydney on 8 August 1907 and was known as the New South Wales Rugby Football League until 1984 when forward thinking marketing managers decided...
and Queensland Rugby League
Queensland Rugby League
The Queensland Rugby Football League is the governing body for rugby league in Queensland. It is a member of the Australian Rugby League and selects the members of Queensland State of Origin teams....
are members of the ARL whilst Northern Territory Rugby League
Northern Territory Rugby League
The Northern Territory Rugby League is responsible for administering the game of rugby league in the Northern Territory. It controls the Darwin Rugby League, Darwin Junior Rugby League and the Central Australian Rugby Football League....
, South Australian Rugby League
South Australian Rugby League
-External links:**...
, Tasmanian Rugby League
Tasmanian Rugby League
The Tasmanian Rugby League is responsible for administering the game of rugby league in the Australian state of Tasmania. Tasmania is an Affiliated State of the overall Australian governing body the Australian Rugby League....
, Victorian Rugby League
Victorian Rugby League
The Victorian Rugby League is responsible for administering the game of rugby league in the Australian state of Victoria. Victoria is an Affiliated State of the overall Australian governing body the Australian Rugby League...
and Western Australia Rugby League
Western Australia Rugby League
The Western Australia Rugby League is responsible for administering the game of rugby league in Western Australia. Western Australia is an Affiliated State of the overall Australian governing body the Australian Rugby League....
have Affiliate state status.
New South Wales has a second governing body, the New South Wales Country Rugby League
New South Wales Country Rugby League
-2011 Tier 2 Championships:-History:Newcastle was the first city outside Sydney to start a league competition, being involved in the Sydney Premiership in 1908-09 and then starting their own competition in 1910....
(NSWCRL) to govern the sport outside the Sydney metropolitan area
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
. In spite of its name, NSWCRL also governs rugby league in the Australian Capital Territory
Australian Capital Territory
The Australian Capital Territory, often abbreviated ACT, is the capital territory of the Commonwealth of Australia and is the smallest self-governing internal territory...
.
Club competitions
National Rugby League
The National Rugby League is the top league of professional rugby league football clubs in Australasia. The NRL's main competition, called the Telstra Premiership , is contested by sixteen teams, fifteen of which are based in Australia with one based in New Zealand...
(NRL). The NRL's Telstra Premiership is contested by 3 teams from Queensland, 10 from New South Wales, 1 from Victoria and 1 from the Australian Capital Territory as well as 1 team from New Zealand.
Underneath the NRL, semi-professional competitions such as the Queensland Cup
Queensland Cup
The Queensland Cup is the premier rugby league football competition in the State of Queensland, Australia.It is a statewide competition with the majority of teams based in South East Queensland but also including sides based in Cairns, Mackay and Rockhampton.The competition began in 1996 as a...
, New South Wales Cup and NSWRL Jim Beam Cup
NSWRL Jim Beam Cup
The Bundaberg Red Cup is a semi-professional development level rugby league competition in New South Wales , Australia, run jointly by the New South Wales Rugby League and the Country Rugby League of New South Wales . The competition is run concurrently with the National Rugby League...
are run in both New South Wales and Queensland. These competitions are the major feeder competitions for the NRL competition. Alongside these mainly metropolitan-based competitions country rugby league bodies run competitions throughout rural Queensland and New South Wales. Amateur competitions are run in the Affiliated states other than Tasmania where competitions ceased in 2004.
Attendances
Rugby league attendances saw their previously best year in 1995 (the year before Australia's Super League WarSuper League war
The Super League war is the common name given to the corporate dispute that was fought in and out of court during the mid-1990s between the Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation-backed Super League and the Kerry Packer and Optus Vision-backed Australian Rugby League organisations over broadcasting...
, with total attendances reaching 3,061,893. Six clubs averaged over 20,000 in that year, a feat still unmatched. This was a large increase on the previous years and was no doubt due to the formation of several new clubs and the renaming of the competition, from the New South Wales Rugby League (NSWRL) to the Australian Rugby league (ARL).
The year 2000 saw club mergers and "relegations" from the NRL. The effective slashing of clubs from the first grade rugby league competition was reflected in the slashing of crowd figures as fans became disgruntled by the club they had supported for many years being torn apart.
Crowd figures did not improve until 2003, with an increase of 249,317 on the previous year, 2002. Figures increased again in 2004 and 2005. The aggregate crowd for 2005 was 2,964,288 and the average crowd figure for regular season matches was 16,468, the highest ever recorded, and 34,710 for play-offs. In 2006, attendance slightly dipped to 2,808,235. An average of 15,601 for regular season matches and 34,163 for playoffs, which was still an improvement on 2004 figures.
In 2007, the number of teams competing in first grade rugby league in Australia increased for the first time since 2002 with the re-introduction of the Gold Coast Titans
Gold Coast Titans
Gold Coast Titans are an Australian professional rugby league football club, based in the Gold Coast, Queensland. The club competes in Australasia's elite rugby league competition, the National Rugby League premiership. It is the newest of the sixteen clubs in the league, having commenced its...
in Gold Coast, Queensland
Gold Coast, Queensland
Gold Coast is a coastal city of Australia located in South East Queensland, 94km south of the state capital Brisbane. With a population approximately 540,000 in 2010, it is the second most populous city in the state, the sixth most populous city in the country, and also the most populous...
.http://stats.rleague.com/rl/crowds/summary.html(Statistics do not include finals)
In 2010 Rugby League recorded its best year ever in Australia, setting a new all time total season attendance record of 3,490,778 spectators - and with four less teams than in 1995.
Representative competitions
The Rugby League State of OriginRugby League State of Origin
State of Origin is an annual best of three series of rugby league football matches contested by the Maroons and the Blues, who represent the Australian states of Queensland and New South Wales respectively...
is an annual series of three interstate matches between the two strongest rugby league states Queensland and New South Wales. The State of Origin series is one of Australia's premier sporting events, attracting a huge television audience and usually selling out the stadiums in which the games are played.
City vs Country Origin
City vs Country Origin
City vs Country is an annual Australian rugby league football match that takes place in New South Wales between City and Country representative sides. The City side represents the Sydney metropolitan area...
is an annual Australian rugby league match that takes place in New South Wales between teams made up of NRL players representing 'City' (Sydney metropolitan area) and 'Country' (all areas in NSW outside the Sydney metropolitan area).
The Affiliated States Championship
Affiliated States Championship
The Affiliated States Championship is an annual rugby league competition run by the Australian Rugby League involving the four affiliated states plus the Australian Police and Australian Defence Force.Following the Championship, an Australian representative side is selected from the teams to tour...
is an annual competition involving four affiliated states (Victoria, South Australia, Northern Territory and Western Australia) plus representative sides from the Australian Police and Australian Defence Force.
Total participation
In 2008, a total of 423,584 Australians participated in rugby league. Junior league registrations have grown climb from 79,000 in 1999 to 120,667 in 2008.In 2008, 269,377 children played Rugby League competitively in schools. This is a 390% increase from 2002, when the first accurate census of school competition participation numbers. ARLD schools programs have directly involved more than 1,000,000 children in Rugby League-based physical activities by in 2008. In a sign of the game's growing influence, in 2010 over 50,000 Victorian school children attended Rugby League school programs.
Women in rugby league
The vast majority of rugby league participants are male. Of the 172,000 participants in 2004, 5% were female.The Australian Women's Rugby League
Women's rugby league
Women's Rugby League is the female-only version of the game rugby league football. There are currently clubs for female only participation running in Australia, Great Britain and New Zealand which are overseen by the various individual organizations of those separate countries and internationally...
was formed in 1993, which only achieved affiliation with the Australian Rugby League in 1998. This is in contrast to the men's competition which has existed since 1908.
The lack of female-participation in Australian rugby league can mostly be attributed to the predominantly masculine culture which discourages women from playing, and provides little financial or cultural incentive to play.
Despite this, a women's rugby league match in Sydney in 1921 attracted around 30,000 spectators - still a record for women's sport in Australia outside Olympic and Commonwealth Games.
Females account for a large percentage of rugby league's viewing public and the attraction of the game for women partly accounts for rugby league's very strong position in the Australian sporting landscape. Many NRL clubs hold initiatives to foster this relationship. For instance, in 2005 the Canterbury Bulldogs
Canterbury Bulldogs
The Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs are an Australian professional rugby league football club based in Belmore, a suburb in the Canterbury-Bankstown region of Sydney. They compete in the National Rugby League premiership, as well as New South Wales Rugby League junior competitions...
staged a luncheon for 300 of Sydney's corporate women to raise funds for the Breast Cancer
Breast cancer
Breast cancer is cancer originating from breast tissue, most commonly from the inner lining of milk ducts or the lobules that supply the ducts with milk. Cancers originating from ducts are known as ductal carcinomas; those originating from lobules are known as lobular carcinomas...
Foundation, as well as skills development for school girls within the Canterbury-Bankstown district. This follows the increased number of female members to the boards of the National Rugby League and several of its clubs. Manly Sea Eagles also instituted several female directed initiatives, some of which were aimed towards further increasing female spectator numbers.
Not all the perceptions of rugby league being a mostly man game are completely true. At a junior and local level there are many women involved in volunteering positions. Women form a very important part of the local club structures. However, it is not customary for women over the age of 11 to continue playing rugby league against the boys and the exclusively women's rugby league clubs have a relatively small profile in comparison to the local boys' clubs.
Rugby league became the first mainstream professional sport in Australia to appoint a female director to a governing body, with Katie Page, the managing director of retail giant Harvey Norman
Harvey Norman
Harvey Norman is a large Australian-based retailer of electrical, computer, furniture, entertainment and bedding goods. It is effectively a franchise and the main brand owned by Harvey Norman Holdings Limited...
, accepting an invitation to join the National Rugby League
National Rugby League
The National Rugby League is the top league of professional rugby league football clubs in Australasia. The NRL's main competition, called the Telstra Premiership , is contested by sixteen teams, fifteen of which are based in Australia with one based in New Zealand...
's executive board.
The Jillaroos, the Australian National Women's rugby league side, defeated 2008 Women's Rugby League World Champions New Zealand in Auckland in 2009 - thereby ending a streak of 10 years of successive defeats to the New Zealand side.
Junior Participation
Recent research by the University of New South Wales has shown that 23% of parents are likely to discourage their son from playing rugby league. In contrast, the next most discouraged sport was rugby union, with only 7.5% of parents willing to discourage the sport. This is despite recent research by Medibank annually since 2003 that puts other sports in Australia, such as Australian Rules Football and soccer as producing more major injuries.The injury rates and the public perception of rugby league as a dangerous sport are most likely the catalysts for the introduction of several initiatives by the national rugby league and ARL development in recent years to curb the number of youth playing other sports. The specific initiatives over the years includes a Safe play code, Kids to kangaroos programmes and new forms of modified rugby league, such as, Mod league and Mini Footy to help young children prepare for the full rigours of the international code. Also with such introductions are the competitions aimed at school children such as Joey league, League of legends and League Sevens, which use modified rugby league rules such as Tag and Sevens.
Because of these recent initiatives, junior league registrations have grown climb from 79,000 in 1999 to 120,667 in 2008 while school participation numbers have grown to 269,377. Rugby league gala days, the ARL’s free school clinic program and various club projects “have directly involved more than 1,000,000 children in Rugby-league based physical activities in 2008”.
Senior Participation
In 2008, 51,540 people participated in senior rugby league. Participation numbers amongst senior divisions tend to decline in higher age groups. While this can be expected to the nature of a physical sport, overall rugby league senior numbers have declined since the early 1990s. The ARL attributes this to game becoming more physically demanding and the increasing pressure to sustain semi-professional clubs and teams. At the same time, however, it notes that “rugby league is, generally, missing a recreational game that keeps people playing the sport when they drop out of the so-called elite stream.” To combat this, the ARL is investing programs, modified rules and gala days to increase senior participation such as the ARL Masters Carnival.Location
New South Wales and Queensland account for the majority of rugby league participation numbers. However, per capita figures show that Queensland and the Northern Territory rate ahead of New South Wales participation figures, making Queensland and the Northern Territory the largest participators per capita of rugby league in Australia.Rugby league enjoys only minor participation in other states of Australia due to competition with Australia's other premier football league, the Australian Football League and the high junior level participation rates of soccer. Victoria and Western Australia have roughly an equal number of participants with Western Australia higher per capita, though Victoria has experienced remarkable growth in recent years, especially in school based Rugby League participation which registered 33,444 participants in 2008. South Australia has the lowest participation levels for mainland Australia and Tasmania has, by far, the least participants for rugby league in the entire nation.
The national team
The Australian national rugby league team represents Australia at rugby leagueRugby league
Rugby league football, usually called rugby league, is a full contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular grass field. One of the two codes of rugby football, it originated in England in 1895 by a split from Rugby Football Union over paying players...
. Since 7 July 1994 the team's nickname has been the Kangaroos. Prior to that the Australian team was only referred to as the Kangaroos when on tours of Great Britain or France
Kangaroo Tour
Kangaroo Tour is the name given to Australian national rugby league team tours of Great Britain and France. The first Kangaroo Tour was in 1908. Traditionally, Kangaroo Tours took place every four years and involved a three-Test Ashes series against Great Britain and a number of tour matches...
. They are administered by the Australian Rugby League
Australian Rugby League
The Australian Rugby League is the governing body for the sport of rugby league in Australia. It is made up of state bodies, including the New South Wales Rugby League and the Queensland Rugby League...
and have been the most dominant national side over the past few decades.
In popular culture
Rugby league has been described as "an iconic Australian sport" and has therefore featured prominently in Australian popular culture. Famous Australian writers throughout history such as Banjo PatersonBanjo Paterson
Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson, OBE was an Australian bush poet, journalist and author. He wrote many ballads and poems about Australian life, focusing particularly on the rural and outback areas, including the district around Binalong, New South Wales where he spent much of his childhood...
, Thomas Keneally
Thomas Keneally
Thomas Michael Keneally, AO is an Australian novelist, playwright and author of non-fiction. He is best known for writing Schindler's Ark, the Booker Prize-winning novel of 1982 which was inspired by the efforts of Poldek Pfefferberg, a Holocaust survivor...
and Kenneth Slessor
Kenneth Slessor
Kenneth Adolf Slessor OBE was an Australian poet and journalist. He was one of Australia's leading poets, notable particularly for the absorption of modernist influences into Australian poetry. The Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry is named after him.-Life:Slessor was born Kenneth Adolphe...
have produced literature about the game. References can be found in film, such as Footy Legends
Footy Legends
Footy Legends is a 2006 Australian film, directed, written and produced by Khoa Do, starring his older brother Anh Do, Angus Sampson, Emma Lung and Claudia Karvan. It was filmed in and around Sydney, Australia, mostly in the western suburbs...
, starring Ahn Do and the 2007 release, The Final Winter
The Final Winter
The Final Winter is an Australian drama film released in 2007. It was directed by Brian Andrews and Jane Forrest and produced by Anthony Coffee, and Michelle Russell, while independently produced it is being distributed by Paramount Pictures. It was written by Matthew Nable who also starred as the...
, the story of the Newtown Jets, starring Matthew Johns
Matthew Johns
Matthew Johns is an Australian rugby league football commentator and former professional player...
. In Search of the Holy Grail also starring Matthew Johns
Matthew Johns
Matthew Johns is an Australian rugby league football commentator and former professional player...
' Footy Show spin-off character, Reg Reagan featured in the Newcastle Film Festival.
Marketing for the game in Australia has enlisted artists such as Tina Turner
Tina Turner
Tina Turner is an American singer and actress whose career has spanned more than 50 years. She has won numerous awards and her achievements in the rock music genre have led many to call her the "Queen of Rock 'n' Roll".Turner started out her music career with husband Ike Turner as a member of the...
, Tom Jones
Tom Jones (singer)
Sir Thomas John Woodward, OBE , known by his stage name Tom Jones, is a Welsh singer.Since the mid 1960s, Jones has sung many styles of popular music – pop, rock, R&B, show tunes, country, dance, techno, soul and gospel – and sold over 100 million records...
and Hoodoo Gurus
Hoodoo Gurus
Hoodoo Gurus are an Australian rock band, formed in Sydney in 1981, by the mainstay Dave Faulkner and later joined by Richard Grossman , Mark Kingsmill , and Brad Shepherd...
to record songs and videos for promotional material.
Several popular TV and radio shows like The Footy Show and Roy and HG's State of Origin commentary
Roy and HG's State of Origin commentary
Broadcast on the Triple J radio station to simulcast with the annual three-game rugby league State of Origin series, Australian comedians Roy and HG provide a commentary of the match at hand...
feature the game. There are also many rugby league based video games
NRL Rugby League (series)
NRL Rugby League is a video game franchise based on the sport of rugby league football. It is developed by New Zealand based Sidhe Interactive and published by Home Entertainment Suppliers...
featuring the NRL sold worldwide.
Media coverage
Due to the widespread interest in rugby league games played, including the State of Origin series, match results, scorelines and reports of injuries to key players, are comprehensively carried by many Australian newspapers. These include the major national daily newspapers; in general match results and reports are published on the weekend of the game and on Mondays, and commentary continues throughout the week, with rugby league-related stories usually to be found in the sporting section of the major newspapers every week-day.All premiership games are broadcast on television, either free-to-air or cable. Online, the ABC
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...
, as well as major newsgroups provide articles on Rugby League, bylined in general by a reporter who is exclusively a sports correspondent. The official publication for the NRL is Big League. Interest in rugby league is highest in the eastern states; as well, many of the large number of Australian expatriates living and working overseas are avidly interested in the season's games, and are able to ensure that they are kept up-to-date by accessing on-line versions of stories provided by major media organisations.
A list of major newspapers which publish rugby league-related stories includes The Australian
The Australian
The Australian is a broadsheet newspaper published in Australia from Monday to Saturday each week since 14 July 1964. The editor in chief is Chris Mitchell, the editor is Clive Mathieson and the 'editor-at-large' is Paul Kelly....
, The Courier-Mail
The Courier-Mail
The Courier-Mail is a daily newspaper published in Brisbane, Australia. Owned by News Limited, it is published daily from Monday to Saturday in tabloid format. Its editorial offices are located at Bowen Hills, in Brisbane's inner northern suburbs, and it is printed at Murarrie, in Brisbane's...
, Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph (Australia)
The Daily Telegraph is an Australian tabloid newspaper published in Sydney, New South Wales, by Nationwide News, part of News Corporation.The Tele, as it is also known, was founded in 1879. From 1936 to 1972, it was owned by Frank Packer's Australian Consolidated Press. That year it was sold to...
, The Sydney Morning Herald
The Sydney Morning Herald
The Sydney Morning Herald is a daily broadsheet newspaper published by Fairfax Media in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1831 as the Sydney Herald, the SMH is the oldest continuously published newspaper in Australia. The newspaper is published six days a week. The newspaper's Sunday counterpart, The...
, Herald Sun
Herald Sun
The Herald Sun is a morning tabloid newspaper based in Melbourne, Australia. It is published by The Herald and Weekly Times, a subsidiary of News Limited, itself a subsidiary of News Corporation. It is available for purchase throughout Melbourne, Regional Victoria, Tasmania, the Australian Capital...
and The Age
The Age
The Age is a daily broadsheet newspaper, which has been published in Melbourne, Australia since 1854. Owned and published by Fairfax Media, The Age primarily serves Victoria, but is also available for purchase in Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and border regions of South Australia and...
. Matches are broadcast on both Channel 9
Nine Network
The Nine Network , is an Australian television network with headquarters based in Willoughby, a suburb located on the North Shore of Sydney. For 50 years since television's inception in Australia, between 1956 and 2006, it was the most watched television network in Australia...
, Foxtel
Foxtel
Foxtel is an Australian pay television company, operating cable, direct broadcast satellite television and IPTV services. It was formed in 1995 through a joint venture established between Telstra and News Corporation....
and in New Zealand by Sky TV
SKY Network Television
Sky Network Television Limited , , is a New Zealand pay television service. On 30 June 2011, Sky had 829,421 subscribers, which comprises:*808,617 digital subscribers*20,840 other subscribers...
.
ABC radio
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...
's Grandstand
ABC Radio Grandstand
ABC Radio Grandstand is a live radio sports focused commentary and talk-back program which runs on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation local radio network across Australia. The program runs on Saturdays and Sundays, typically from noon or an hour before, until 6 pm...
program broadcasts live rugby league games on the weekends. Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
station, 2GB
2GB
2GB is a commercial radio station in Sydney, Australia broadcasting on 873 kHz, AM. It is one of Australia's most popular talk-back radio stations, and is the number one station in Sydney.-History:The station commenced broadcasting in August 1926...
, also broadcasts live NRL
National Rugby League
The National Rugby League is the top league of professional rugby league football clubs in Australasia. The NRL's main competition, called the Telstra Premiership , is contested by sixteen teams, fifteen of which are based in Australia with one based in New Zealand...
matches Friday to Sunday (with their Continuous Call Team
Continuous Call Team
The Continuous Call Team is an Australian radio sports program, covering the news and live games of the National Rugby League. It is produced and broadcast by 2GB Sydney, and is relayed to stations in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, Western Australia and Papua New Guinea.The team have...
) while Triple M
Triple M
The Triple M Network is an active rock radio network in Australia owned by media company Austereo, who also own the Today Network.- History :...
has exclusive rights to games played on Monday nights.
See also
- Rugby league in the Australian Capital TerritoryRugby league in the Australian Capital TerritoryTraditionally, Canberra was considered to be one of the points which define the Barassi Line. Due to its proximity to Sydney, the Australian Capital Territory has support for multiple football codes, including rugby union, rugby league, soccer and Australian rules football.-Governing body:The New...
- Rugby league in the Northern TerritoryRugby league in the Northern TerritoryRugby league is administered by the Northern Territory Rugby League. Rugby league in the Darwin is played at Richardson Park, whilst Rugby league in Alice Springs is played at Anzac Oval.-History:...
- Rugby league in New South WalesRugby league in New South WalesRugby league has the highest spectator numbers of the various codes of football in New South Wales. It began in Australia in 1907, when the New South Wales Rugby League was formed as a professional competition, following the rules of the Northern Rugby Football Union in England...
- Rugby league in QueenslandRugby league in QueenslandRugby league is the most popular sport in the Australian state of Queensland.-History:The earliest record of rugby football being played in Queensland is in 1876...
- Rugby league in South AustraliaRugby league in South AustraliaRugby league in South Australia is a minority sport, played at amateur level.-History:Rugby league in the state traces its roots in the state back to the 1940s, when the Port Adelaide rugby union team split, and defected to rugby league....
- Rugby league in VictoriaRugby league in VictoriaRugby league football has been played and watched by people in the Australian state of Victoria since the early 20th century. While for most of its history there the game's popularity has been marginal due to Australian rules football's dominance in southern states, rugby league's popularity has...
- Rugby league in Western AustraliaRugby league in Western AustraliaRugby league in Western Australia describes the sport of rugby league, which is currently a minority sport, as it is played at amateur level and watched by people in Western Australia. The state was once represented at the highest level, by the Western Reds/Perth Reds until it was decided they...
- Sport in AustraliaSport in AustraliaAustralia has a long sporting history dating back to the mid 1800s. By the 1920s, a number of sports were being played by both men and women, including cricket, badminton, judo, swimming, tennis, netball, lacrosse, golf, hockey and various codes of football....
- Australian Rugby League Hall of FameAustralian Rugby League Hall of FameThe Australian Rugby League Hall of Fame honors players who have shown exceptional skill at rugby league, all-time great coaches and referees, and other major contributors to the game who are Australian...
- Australian Rugby LeagueAustralian Rugby LeagueThe Australian Rugby League is the governing body for the sport of rugby league in Australia. It is made up of state bodies, including the New South Wales Rugby League and the Queensland Rugby League...
- National Rugby LeagueNational Rugby LeagueThe National Rugby League is the top league of professional rugby league football clubs in Australasia. The NRL's main competition, called the Telstra Premiership , is contested by sixteen teams, fifteen of which are based in Australia with one based in New Zealand...
- List of Australian rugby league stadiums by capacity
External links
- SportScan - Rugby League Search
- The Founding of Rugby League in Australia & New Zealand
- Sports research databases
- National Rugby League Statistics
- Involvement and participation in sports and physical activities - 2003
- Exercise, Recreation and Sports Surveys
- Participation demographics of organised sport in Australia
- Sports Attendance, Australia - 2002
- Australian History
- Rugby league image makeover
- - Medibank Injury Report
- Google-Video - 25 years of State of Origin NSW vs QLD