THE RL1908 BLOG

News, Reviews & Opinion - Sean Fagan - RL1908.com

In the wake of rugby league players swapping codes, more than a few media commentators have declared that it's no wonder NRL footballers aren't loyal to the 13-man game, given rugby league started in Australia with self-interested footballers chasing club contracts from the highest-bidder.

The inference is that rugby league unleashed the jeanie of professionalism in team sport in Australia in 1908, cared nothing for the impact it made on the nation's other football codes (rugby union, Australian rules and soccer), and that it is now getting dished up some of its own medicine for a change.

Such logic stems from a mistaken understanding of how rugby league began in Australia, and what was going on in the rest of Australian sport at the time (and earlier).

So let’s look at what happened when rugby league started in Sydney in 1908...

This article is based on Pioneers of Rugby League.

James J. Giltinan and the code’s founders adopted a “district scheme” - they divided the city up into districts; you could only play for the club that covered the district in which you lived.

Most players also worked in the district, alongside the club's supporters, and it was this "district scheme" and rivalry that built the rich traditional tribal loyalties that underpins rugby league.

The players received compensation for lost work wages from football injuries (which the NSWRU had denied them), along with an equally divided share of their club's gate-takings at the end of each season. The money was split on a per game rate. (In any event, until the 1920s when club football crowds rose substantially, it really meant a cut of bugger all.)

At Eastern Suburbs, Dally Messenger got the same amount PER GAME as every other Easts first grader. Messenger, like every other rugby league player in Sydney, was not free to join any other club.

The "residential rule" was applied to anyone wanting to move home, and it was against the NSWRL's rules for a club to encourage a footballer to move his living quarters from one district to another. That's not to say that some clubs and players didn't secretly break the NSWRL's rules, but it was rare and punishments were applied when cases were uncovered.

The big money (potentially) for rugby league players was earned from a cut of representative football gate-takings and Kangaroo tours, not club football.

In the 1950s and '60s Sydney clubs (backed by Leagues Clubs and their poker machines) began to contract players and supplement match payments with individual bonus amounts for star players, who had increasingly argued that they should be paid comensurate with their individual contribution to the team's on-field success and crowd-drawing.

In this period there were no doubt instances of secret encouragement and agreement for players to move their home into another club's area - but it was still not an "open" scheme, not sanctioned by the NSWRL, and not the norm. The greater power still lay with the clubs, rather than the players.

Obviously footballers coming to Sydney from elsewhere could organise beforehand (including financial arrangements) into which district they would make their home, but the players rising up through the Sydney grade scene had no choice.

In the late 1960s moving between Sydney clubs for league players was still heavily restricted, even if your existing contract had finished.

It was entirely at the whim of the Club secretary, and whether he thought your services were unwanted and/or what price he thought he could get for releasing you - if he was prepared to put your name on the open transfer list, it was accompanied by a transfer fee the rival club had to pay (sometimes so prohibitively high, the player realistically had no hope of another club taking him, forcing him to re-sign and stay).

The NSWRL and its clubs argued that the system was needed to prevent the wealthest clubs from buying up all the top players. The QRL and the NSW Country Rugby League imposed transfer fees as well, before giving a clearance for a player to move elsewhere.

There was no open choice for rugby league players to pursue money over club loyalty in the Sydney premiership competition until after Balmain junior Dennis Tutty won his Equity Court action in 1971 against his club and the NSWRL - Tutty's action brought down the transfer system, and uncontracted players were free to negotiate with any club.

Tutty's success won a battle for rights that are now enjoyed by every professional team sport athlete in Australia.

Indeed, almost all Australians take such rights for granted, as part of a basic freedom for any athlete to offer their skill and labour to any potential employer, completely oblivious that a fight had to be fought by Tutty to win them - and that was only 40 years ago.

The Sydney rugby league premiership had, of course, not lived in isolation. From the very first Kangaroo tour of 1908, rugby league players were offered big money contracts to join English rugby league and even FA soccer clubs. In the 1920s and 30s NSW bush clubs, backed by local businessmen, secured the services of many top Sydney footballers.

In the late 1940s the Sydney competition lost young players Harry Bath, Arthur Clues, Brian Bevan, Pat Devery and others to English clubs. Clues and Devery had just played for Australia, and Bath would have too if not for an injury. Clive Churchill almost went with them.

Faced with the loss of these players, Jersey Flegg, one of the code's pioneer players and NSWRL President (1929-60) said: "When the game was founded in 1908 its first principle was that the players must come first. If a player can better himself or his family by going overseas, then he must be allowed to do so."

Despite the exodus of players, in 1950 Australia won the Ashes for the first time on home soil in 30 years. Attendances at representative and clubs matches continued to grow through the 1950s, setting up the halcoyn days of the 1960s. Much of St George's and the Kangaroos' success was built on the football knowledge shared by players who had come back from playing with clubs in England.

Players who had left Sydney rugby league weren't shunned by the code. Even though Brian Bevan played just a handful of games for Easts, never wore the green and gold of the Kangaroos, and spent 20 seasons in England, the Australian rugby league community included the legendary winger in the Centenary's "Team of the Century." Harry Bath and Ken Kearney, who both had the bulk of their playing careers in England, came close to inclusion as well.

Rugby league is the youngest football code in Australia - it was born into a sporting scene where the other codes have always been challenging it, and where some of its top players could and have left for greener pastures. It's not a shock to rugby league to lose a star player, and clearly, its never been a fatal blow to the code's dominance.

Many critics speak as if rugby league brought the professional demon to team sport in 1895/1908 - completely ignoring that English club soccer was professional from the 1880s, English and Australian cricketers were professionals (by another name if not openly), the NSWRU's favoured "paid amateurs", and even in Melbourne the formation of the VFL (now AFL) in 1897 which was a split from the amateur VFA, and is itself a tale of club and player (covert) professionalism and secret payments, self-interest, money, and power - all taking place 10 years before rugby league arrived in Australia.

If “open choice” for footballers to pursue a better deal for their talents was such a crime, then I dare say that was far preferable to the making of hidden payments to players encouraging them to switch between clubs and subvert a sport’s controlling body’s laws against player payments/contracts, and thus deceive other players and the public.

The NSWRL's intiatives of 1908 were then adopted by the VFL in Melbourne with the introduction of the open player payments system (in 1911) and the club district scheme (in 1915).

Funny how the "crime" that rugby league in 1908 is accused of is precisely what we all today see as the fair entitlements and rights of every team sport athlete in Australia.