damianFootball Wars Part 5- Rugby League
August 4th 2006 00:02
Yeah, these articles are getting longer and longer- sorry about that- but uni is upon me and I dont have the time to cut it back. Or check for mistakes.
If there are some please feel free to comment.
Also, 'the greatest game' (or TGG) is apparently the monniker for rugby league, it's just used more by Poms than Australians. It's a bit weird but I needed a monnicker so I used it...
Football Wars Part 5- The Greatest Game
And thus we come to the last of the football codes in our journey through the Australian football landscape.
When it comes to the football family Soccer would be the troubled underacheiver, Aussie Rules the insulated-local kid, Rugby Union the rich but not-quite-in-touch-with-the-common-man kid and Rugby League... Rugby League would be the problem child. Although Soccer has also had its fair share of trouble the round ball game has had them on the small stage of a stunted, almost non-existent domestic competition. Rugby League on the other hand, second member of ‘The Big Two’ codes, has played its drama out on the widely seen stage of the national media, staggering from one tragedy to the next as it struggles to get it’s house in order. Unfortunately for the other codes though Rugby League appears to not only be the problem child but also the Terminator of the football codes. No matter how many times the code shoots itself in the foot or falls on its own sword it still manages to keep on lurching forward, much to the chagrin of those who predicted its downfall.
As an offshoot of Rugby Union (hence the way they both share the ‘rugby’ moniker, although union now claims sole rights) Rugby League’s history is just as fascinating and bizarre. The code apparently started in protest of the restrictions put in place by Rugby Unions governing body regarding the compensation of injured players. For many of those protesting playing rugby was something they did on weekends on their day off work which they could not afford to give up. Were they to sustain any injuries playing the game they would not be able to return to work the following day and earn their living and without any form of compensation their families would suffer. This was especially prevalent in the north of England which was where a lot of the nation’s mines were located and entire communities of miners tried to scrape together a living.
Even after some increasingly vocal protests from these disaffected miners the game’s governing body continued to refuse the players any monetary compensation so that a decision was finally made to start up a break-away league called the Northern Union which would abandon Amateurism in favour of a professional competition with paid players. With a reasonable amount of friction existing between the two split camps they gradually began to move their separate ways and over time the rules of both games began to diverge, especially on the part of Rugby League. In 1908 the changes finally reached Australia where, as a result of an over enthusiastic stubborn streak, Australia’s Rugby Union officials banned most of the nations best players for playing a game of rugby for money, players who presently switched to the professional form of the game and the Sydney Rugby League was born.
It was from there that the game expanded to Queensland and other parts of the country, becoming the dominant code of football played on the east coast of Australia, right up to the creation of the NSW Rugby League which eventually expanded in the same way as Aussie Rules VFL by adding new cities until the competition dominated the eastern seaboard.
Unfortunately though, in the mid 1990s the game became a victim of its own popularity as a spat over media coverage soon turned into a full scale civil war as Rupert Murdoch and Kerry Packer went toe to toe with the creation of The Superleague, an alternative grid iron-esque competition set up so the Murdoch press could have exclusive rights to its coverage. Chaos naturally ensued as ridiculous sums of money were paid to players all over the world, new teams were established, money was thrown at various domestic competitions around the world for their loyalty and one team towns were split down the middle. Eventually the fans had enough and support for the code plummeted.
With plummeting fan support and a financial crisis looming the two rival groups finally put their differences aside and in 1997 both came together as the newly born NRL. However the damage had been done and without significant influence the game was forced to accept a paltry television rights deal and scale back the competition including the abandonment of teams in Perth, Adelaide and some of the foundation clubs that were forced to merge. Many of the games big names also retired and other codes began to move in on what was traditionally Rugby League territory.
Fortunately for League fans though the code has managed to claw its way back in the last half decade, reestablishing itself as the dominant code of the eastern states.
As a code, League is well placed to continue its run as a dominant player in Australian sport. Perhaps more than any other football code Rugby League has managed to establish itself well in every strata of the sporting representational system from its strong grass roots development through to its now-recovered domestic competition and on into the most successful representative competition of any of the codes in the State of Origin and the newly resurrected international Tri Nations competition between Great Britain and New Zealand. With the foundations laid in all these areas League in Australia not only has many avenues in which it can expand but it is also able to influence the development of it’s game around the world in a way that many local sports can only dream about.
The biggest problem with the sustained growth of League though is a lack of money. With the internal bleeding that occurred with the Superleague War Rugby League is still recovering and will be affected by a lack of television income for many years to come as the codes current television deal was forced lower by the record breaking AFL television rights deal that dominated TV rights bidding wars. This for League will be a constant annoyance over the years to come as the code wrestles with its ability to fund its various projects.
Rugby League, as a sport, is reasonably unique in that it is one of the few sports in the world that encourages players to run directly at their opposition- other sports allow for it but it is usually of more service to avoid the players opposite number. With this unique structure to the game’s rules comes a sport that is above all a sport of head-to-head confrontation where the heroes of the game clash head on in a test of the strongest or most skillful. If it all sounds a bit poetic than you’d be right and it has lead to a sport that is a hero-making machine. With a structure that encourages the development of heroes and villains from juniors up and through their local club Rugby League has never had trouble developing new stars, seeing a non-stop roll out of ‘big names’ the likes of which endlessly fuels grass roots development. Unfortunately though it also generates drama, both good and bad, for a code that above all others needs to avoid it and when mixed with a culture that revolves around the licensed leagues clubs of NSW and Queensland and the traditions of alcohol that go with it the code is often trapped between its ability to produce exciting new players and the ability to produce off-field controversy.
One area in which the codes administrators will be happy is the growth of its domestic competition. From the car wreck that was Superleague things significantly improved with domestic clubs finally gelling around their new merged relationships and fans returning to the game in record numbers. With at least seven different premiers in the last seven years the NRL has finally started to get things in order with salary caps, rule changes and competition format finally reaching an ordered state that makes sense. This is also helped by the fact that League is positioned in the nations most lucrative television market where it is able to pull in some very healthy viewer figures on a week by week basis.
Unfortunately though his does not extend to crowd figures that have been increasing for the last several years but are nowhere near that of Union or Aussie Rules. In this regard League suffers the bizarre predicament of being a ‘TV game’- a sport that is best viewed on television rather than at the stadium where it is played. Unlike the other footballs where there is large movement up and down the field as a result of the ball being kicked Rugby League is dominated by man on man hitups and lateral passing. This means that all of the action that occurs on a Rugby League field can be easily captured by television cameras with even the kicks coming at predictable points in the tackle count and the cameras being able to focus on where the ball will land. The rest of the play on the field also occurs in close so the television coverage often involves a much tighter camera shot with replays of what happens and the use of a video referee significantly adding to the viewers experience. The end result of this is that, unlike Melbourne where the dominant code is crowd friendly, it is often better to watch Rugby League at home in front of the television which makes it harder for administrators to convince viewers to become on-ground spectators. This means high television figures but low crowd counts with many empty seats and fair weather fans who show up to games to see their team win but stay at home if there’s a good chance they will lose. It is one of the more bizarre issues surrounding any of the codes but one that League may have to address if it wants to be taken seriously and generate the rabid crowd cultures that other codes enjoy.
But with the good positioning of League in Australia there is still plenty of room for it to expand domestically and that is what the NRL is doing with a brand new team on the rapidly growing Gold Coast and a lot of money going into expanding League’s presence in Melbourne by boosting the awareness of the Melbourne Storm, getting a new rectangular stadium built, having several representative games being played in Melbourne and the development of the grass roots junior competitions. With the new team on the Gold Coast League will also get another new stadium to use as well as increase the player base for its very successful State of Origin concept.
Internationally the game is also expanding with the staging of the successful Tri Nations competition which saw Australia’s easy dominance of the international scene broken by New Zealand, the competition being hosted by Australia in 2006. This will be followed up by the Rugby League World Cup in 2008 which will also be in Australia as part of the centenary celebrations of League in Australia.
But it will be the sports ability to raise the necessary resources that will dictate its growth over the next decade. With an administration that runs on spare change the game has become a lean, penny pinching entrepreneur, scraping money from alternative income sources such as the State of Origin and Tri Nations as necessary thanks to a lack of TV revenue but it will have to continue to be creative if it is to reach its full potential in the face of its newly cashed up rival codes.
Some links:
Official NRL site
Official English Superleague site
If there are some please feel free to comment.
Also, 'the greatest game' (or TGG) is apparently the monniker for rugby league, it's just used more by Poms than Australians. It's a bit weird but I needed a monnicker so I used it...
Football Wars Part 5- The Greatest Game
And thus we come to the last of the football codes in our journey through the Australian football landscape.
When it comes to the football family Soccer would be the troubled underacheiver, Aussie Rules the insulated-local kid, Rugby Union the rich but not-quite-in-touch-with-the-common-man kid and Rugby League... Rugby League would be the problem child. Although Soccer has also had its fair share of trouble the round ball game has had them on the small stage of a stunted, almost non-existent domestic competition. Rugby League on the other hand, second member of ‘The Big Two’ codes, has played its drama out on the widely seen stage of the national media, staggering from one tragedy to the next as it struggles to get it’s house in order. Unfortunately for the other codes though Rugby League appears to not only be the problem child but also the Terminator of the football codes. No matter how many times the code shoots itself in the foot or falls on its own sword it still manages to keep on lurching forward, much to the chagrin of those who predicted its downfall.
Even after some increasingly vocal protests from these disaffected miners the game’s governing body continued to refuse the players any monetary compensation so that a decision was finally made to start up a break-away league called the Northern Union which would abandon Amateurism in favour of a professional competition with paid players. With a reasonable amount of friction existing between the two split camps they gradually began to move their separate ways and over time the rules of both games began to diverge, especially on the part of Rugby League. In 1908 the changes finally reached Australia where, as a result of an over enthusiastic stubborn streak, Australia’s Rugby Union officials banned most of the nations best players for playing a game of rugby for money, players who presently switched to the professional form of the game and the Sydney Rugby League was born.
It was from there that the game expanded to Queensland and other parts of the country, becoming the dominant code of football played on the east coast of Australia, right up to the creation of the NSW Rugby League which eventually expanded in the same way as Aussie Rules VFL by adding new cities until the competition dominated the eastern seaboard.
Unfortunately though, in the mid 1990s the game became a victim of its own popularity as a spat over media coverage soon turned into a full scale civil war as Rupert Murdoch and Kerry Packer went toe to toe with the creation of The Superleague, an alternative grid iron-esque competition set up so the Murdoch press could have exclusive rights to its coverage. Chaos naturally ensued as ridiculous sums of money were paid to players all over the world, new teams were established, money was thrown at various domestic competitions around the world for their loyalty and one team towns were split down the middle. Eventually the fans had enough and support for the code plummeted.
With plummeting fan support and a financial crisis looming the two rival groups finally put their differences aside and in 1997 both came together as the newly born NRL. However the damage had been done and without significant influence the game was forced to accept a paltry television rights deal and scale back the competition including the abandonment of teams in Perth, Adelaide and some of the foundation clubs that were forced to merge. Many of the games big names also retired and other codes began to move in on what was traditionally Rugby League territory.
Benji Marshall- one of the young stars of the game
Fortunately for League fans though the code has managed to claw its way back in the last half decade, reestablishing itself as the dominant code of the eastern states.
As a code, League is well placed to continue its run as a dominant player in Australian sport. Perhaps more than any other football code Rugby League has managed to establish itself well in every strata of the sporting representational system from its strong grass roots development through to its now-recovered domestic competition and on into the most successful representative competition of any of the codes in the State of Origin and the newly resurrected international Tri Nations competition between Great Britain and New Zealand. With the foundations laid in all these areas League in Australia not only has many avenues in which it can expand but it is also able to influence the development of it’s game around the world in a way that many local sports can only dream about.
The biggest problem with the sustained growth of League though is a lack of money. With the internal bleeding that occurred with the Superleague War Rugby League is still recovering and will be affected by a lack of television income for many years to come as the codes current television deal was forced lower by the record breaking AFL television rights deal that dominated TV rights bidding wars. This for League will be a constant annoyance over the years to come as the code wrestles with its ability to fund its various projects.
Rugby League, as a sport, is reasonably unique in that it is one of the few sports in the world that encourages players to run directly at their opposition- other sports allow for it but it is usually of more service to avoid the players opposite number. With this unique structure to the game’s rules comes a sport that is above all a sport of head-to-head confrontation where the heroes of the game clash head on in a test of the strongest or most skillful. If it all sounds a bit poetic than you’d be right and it has lead to a sport that is a hero-making machine. With a structure that encourages the development of heroes and villains from juniors up and through their local club Rugby League has never had trouble developing new stars, seeing a non-stop roll out of ‘big names’ the likes of which endlessly fuels grass roots development. Unfortunately though it also generates drama, both good and bad, for a code that above all others needs to avoid it and when mixed with a culture that revolves around the licensed leagues clubs of NSW and Queensland and the traditions of alcohol that go with it the code is often trapped between its ability to produce exciting new players and the ability to produce off-field controversy.
Back when Australia dominated world League
One area in which the codes administrators will be happy is the growth of its domestic competition. From the car wreck that was Superleague things significantly improved with domestic clubs finally gelling around their new merged relationships and fans returning to the game in record numbers. With at least seven different premiers in the last seven years the NRL has finally started to get things in order with salary caps, rule changes and competition format finally reaching an ordered state that makes sense. This is also helped by the fact that League is positioned in the nations most lucrative television market where it is able to pull in some very healthy viewer figures on a week by week basis.
Unfortunately though his does not extend to crowd figures that have been increasing for the last several years but are nowhere near that of Union or Aussie Rules. In this regard League suffers the bizarre predicament of being a ‘TV game’- a sport that is best viewed on television rather than at the stadium where it is played. Unlike the other footballs where there is large movement up and down the field as a result of the ball being kicked Rugby League is dominated by man on man hitups and lateral passing. This means that all of the action that occurs on a Rugby League field can be easily captured by television cameras with even the kicks coming at predictable points in the tackle count and the cameras being able to focus on where the ball will land. The rest of the play on the field also occurs in close so the television coverage often involves a much tighter camera shot with replays of what happens and the use of a video referee significantly adding to the viewers experience. The end result of this is that, unlike Melbourne where the dominant code is crowd friendly, it is often better to watch Rugby League at home in front of the television which makes it harder for administrators to convince viewers to become on-ground spectators. This means high television figures but low crowd counts with many empty seats and fair weather fans who show up to games to see their team win but stay at home if there’s a good chance they will lose. It is one of the more bizarre issues surrounding any of the codes but one that League may have to address if it wants to be taken seriously and generate the rabid crowd cultures that other codes enjoy.
Kiwis win Tri Nations 2005- now we're not so dominant
But with the good positioning of League in Australia there is still plenty of room for it to expand domestically and that is what the NRL is doing with a brand new team on the rapidly growing Gold Coast and a lot of money going into expanding League’s presence in Melbourne by boosting the awareness of the Melbourne Storm, getting a new rectangular stadium built, having several representative games being played in Melbourne and the development of the grass roots junior competitions. With the new team on the Gold Coast League will also get another new stadium to use as well as increase the player base for its very successful State of Origin concept.
Internationally the game is also expanding with the staging of the successful Tri Nations competition which saw Australia’s easy dominance of the international scene broken by New Zealand, the competition being hosted by Australia in 2006. This will be followed up by the Rugby League World Cup in 2008 which will also be in Australia as part of the centenary celebrations of League in Australia.
But it will be the sports ability to raise the necessary resources that will dictate its growth over the next decade. With an administration that runs on spare change the game has become a lean, penny pinching entrepreneur, scraping money from alternative income sources such as the State of Origin and Tri Nations as necessary thanks to a lack of TV revenue but it will have to continue to be creative if it is to reach its full potential in the face of its newly cashed up rival codes.
Some links:
Official NRL site
Official English Superleague site
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