Rugby League & ANZAC Day

Sean Fagan of RL1908.com

Ted Larkin - NSWRL Secretary. Killed at the Gallipoli landing on 25 April 1915.

The ANZAC Day holiday was first proclaimed as a Public Holiday in NSW in 1924.

The first ANZAC Day rugby league matches were held in 1926 - ANZAC Day in 1926 was a Sunday, and with sport on Sundays being banned, two NSWRL premiership matches were held on the holiday Monday - University v Newtown, Easts v Balmain.

In 1927 a full round of matches (4 games) were played on ANZAC Day (a Monday).

Rugby league - either a NSWRL/NRL premiership game(s), or a representative match(es) - has been played on every ANZAC Day (or the Monday holiday where it fell on a Sunday) ever since, except during WW2.

For many seasons in the 1930s, ANZAC Day was the opening day of the NSWRL club premiership season.

NOTE - A Comparison with VFL/AFL: Despite the AFL's ANZAC Day match being portrayed as a great Melbourne sporting tradition, & the code supposedly having a strong connection with ANZAC Day traditions, the first VFL match on an ANZAC Day was in 1960 (44 years after rugby league). There was no ANZAC Day match in the VFL between 1964 and 1987. The first Collingwood v Essendon "traditional" ANZAC Day AFL match was in 1994.