THE RL1908 BLOG

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

Someone really needs to do a thorough study of events in both codes in Brisbane and Sydney in the 1920s - there is a really interesting and remarkable story buried in that time - of how rugby union died-out (apart from Sydney) and seemingly would never return, and how an in-fight in rugby league aided the amateur code's recovery in Brisbane.

There is a brief look at in "Red, Red, Red - The Story of Queensland Rugby" by Ian Deihm, but it (unsurprisingly) only looks at it from a RU viewpoint.

Rugby union in Queensland was reduced to just Toowoomba by the end of 1920. With no one left to play, their clubs & players joined rugby league. In NSW, the code was barely alive outside the private schools and colleges, and a mere handful of Sydney clubs.

Earlier in Brisbane, the QRU and the clubs had suffered huge financial losses (I'm not sure why). With not enough players, their club teams were 14-a-side in 1919/20.

At Easter in 1920 Harry Sunderland (for the QRL) offered to host two League v Union matches to allow the QRU to settle all its debts. It apparently settled the debts, but that merely made it an easier path to closing their doors.

It was not until 1928 that the GPS schools in Brisbane again took up rugby union, and that was partly the result of bickering between the BRL and the QRL. The QRU re-formed in May 1928, and promptly offered the BRL the chance for "fusion" of the two bodies i.e. for the BRL to join the QRU!

With the involvement of the NSWRL, the QRL v BRL fight was settled soon after. Arguably though, the bickering within the RL community had left the door open to rugby union to re-establish itself. I think rugby union would have re-established anyway given the code was recovering in Sydney following the NSWRL's decision to not cater for amateur clubs and players. No doubt though, the rugby league battle in Brisbane made it easier for the QRU to recover.

In the late 1910s and early 1920s in Sydney, there were numerous attempts to establish amateur rugby league competitions in Sydney and affiliate with the NSWRL.

In other words, there were a lot of amateur rugby union players who preferred to be playing by rugby league rules, but couldn't for fear of being classed/banned as professionals (which had consequences when they wanted to take up another sport e.g. athletics, rowing).

Why league was so popular as a game (to play) immediately after WW1 is an interesting question - one explanation is that it seems to have been a point in time at which the playing rules of league must have provided a stark - and appealing - alternative to union.

One outcome of this in the early 1920s (and evidence of the prevailing spirit at the time i.e. amateurs wanted to play league not union) was the entry of Sydney University into the premiership - however, that is as far as the NSWRL went.

Had the NSWRL taken up these calls for amateur rugby league competitions, most of the objections against the 13-man code (professionalism) would have disappeared, and with it, most of the support for the NSWRU.

Many footballers chose union over league simply because of the professionalism/amateur issue, and not because they preferred 15-a-side rugby over 13-a-side. (In country NSW most bush towns in the early 1920s simply gave up union and took up league.)

The rugby league community in Sydney had no huge gripe with its amateur rugby union cousins, and no desire to wipe union off the map.

The NSWRL preferred to leave the amateur players under the care of the NSWRU - primarily as there was no profit in it. What the NSWRL didn't foresee (nor the NSWRU for that matter) was that one day (1995) rugby union would turn professional, and would thus become a competitor for professional footballers and gate-money (together now with television income).

However, as far as league officials/supporters were concerned at that time, if union ever turned professional that would be a victory-day for rugby league anyway (in other words, the "war" would be over).

In hindsight, the NSWRL & QRL could have rubbed rugby union in Australia completely out in the mid-1920s.

Arguably, the revision of the play-the-ball rule in 1926 sped the game up so much that it again took the game away from amateur "Saturday footballers" (notwithstanding that the youthful students of Sydney University had their only "golden period" in that season under the new rule).

Beyond all that - and this is just speculation on my part - I still have a lingering suspicion that the birth of rugby league in NSW and Qld in 1908 was all about protecting rugby union (from the expansion of quasi-pro Aust rules), as much as it was about fair reward for footballers.

The reluctance of the NSWRL & QRL in the 1920s to bring about union's extinction suggests the formation of professional rugby league was largely about providing a safe harbourage for amateur rugby union.

Faced against a professional Australian rules in NSW & Queensland, rugby union, being tied to amateurism and restricted by the "laws against professionalism" under the RFU/IRB, and therefore unable to address the needs of the working-class footballer, would have gone the way it did in Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia.