Free book extract: Rugby league's Versailles and the birth of the NRL
The NRL is 25 years old today.
By STEVE MASCORD
AS if things couldn’t get any worse, on the morning of Friday, December 19, 1997 - despite it being the height of summer - drizzling rain greeted media representatives as they arrived in the Moore Park precinct of the Sydney Cricket Ground and Football Stadium.
That day, a series of meetings framed with Spartan precision would determine if the ARL would make peace with Super League, if there would be one competition in 1998 or two.
If two, each ARL club would - reportedly - be $300,000 worse off - but still there were doubts. “What concerns our club is that we are handing over our destiny to be determined by a company whose directors we don’t know, whose powers and functions we don’t know in any detail and who will be deciding - on criteria we don’t know - our futures as clubs,” Gold Coast’s Tom Bellew said.
“If there’s no additional money, we won’t be going ahead with the peace plan,” said North Sydney’s Bob Saunders.
Slowly the cars started to pull into the scene of Newcastle’s dramatic triumph two months earlier. Knights chairman Michael Hill was late because of traffic - but not late enough to avoid the rain, which didn’t clear until 9am.
Then it started to warm up, literally and figuratively.
The first meeting at the SFS was of the NSWRL board; 8am. This comprised Neil Whittaker, Warren Lockwood, Nick Politis, Bob Millward and Denis Fitzgerald.
At 9am, the ARL board met. At 10am, a meeting was scheduled between four representatives of the Country Rugby League, two referees’ representatives and the 10 vice-presidents of the NSWRL board.
Whittaker was to address all three meetings on the proposal.
“I was on the Australian Rugby League board and I was on the New South Wales Rugby League board and it was in one of the corporate boxes,” Millward recalls.
“I’d heard most of it but there was always an update, on every report back. The clubs had come in at nine. Over that four-hour period there was variation ... I wouldn’t say on the hour but there were plenty of meetings and then reports back and then responses to those reports.”
A 20 minute walk away, in the very same hotel where they had “partied like there was no tomorrow” 441 days earlier, Super League club representatives had gathered to receive the news.
“We were like a cat on a hot tin roof, waiting,” says Kevin Neil. Ian Frykberg took multiple calls from Whittaker and vice versa.
Millward recalls: “On the day, they wanted every club executive, their full board if possible, to be in attendance.
“Neil and John McDonald were the two that took it around.
“There were relays going back to the boxes. They would have 20 minutes discussion and deliberation and they would then come back and deliver what they thought of - I’ve got to say - the ‘latest’ proposal.
“Because there was proposal after proposal, change after change, going on.”
At 11am, the chairmen and chief executives of the 11 surviving ARL clubs (after the death of the Crushers) were to gather. The general committee meeting was at 2pm, with everyone together. During a break in this meeting, the board of every club met individually in different corporate boxes. “We have 60 minutes to make decisions which will affect a club that has been in existence for 60 years,” an unnamed official was quoted as saying in that day’s Sydney Morning Herald.
Then, when that was over, everyone met one more time. The players association had no vote but referees did, a small indication of the paradigm that was being left behind.
“Money wasn’t the greatest consideration,” Millward recalls. “From an ARL point of view, we wanted a date when News Limited would exit the game. To form the NRL, it was a partnership between Super League and the Australian Rugby League but we were looking for a timeframe when News Limited would exit the partnership.
“They started at about 20 to 25 (years). We said ‘let’s start with one’. I think it ended up at ‘within 20’. It didn’t go 20 of course. But they weren’t giving any commitment of a shorter period.
“I think both parties were desirous of forming the NRL but in hindsight I’m sure that News Limited, with their financial backing of the Super League, held a lot of the cards - as is the case in most negotiations in regard to forming partnerships or takeovers or whatever you want to call them.
“I think both parties wanted it to come out that it wasn’t a takeover, that both parties were winners, but I think most of the losers ended up on the ARL side - particularly the clubs.”
Including, perhaps, Millward’s club: the Illawarra Steelers.
Damian Kelly, who was working for 2UE on the day, recalls: “We were there all day. No social media, it was made for radio. We were giving updates, it was fantastic.
“I do remember this most magnificent game of cricket that all the media played. We were waiting there for hours. There were cameramen and reporters.”
Contemporary accounts tell us one fan was present for what would become the birth of the NRL. He identified himself to media only as “Balmain Tiger” and carried a placard that read “It’s time. Peace with honour. The ARL must control. Let’s get on with the game.” Michael Cowley, who wrote one of those accounts, tells me now Balmain Tiger was “one of those guys who, like many at the time, was pissed off with the way the whole thing had played out and wanted the game he loved back the way it was.”
At midday, Balmain Tiger announced to all and sundry he was going to Balmain for a beer.
It had been a quite a month.
Whittaker and Frykberg met twice during the final week of November. The ARL surrendered its majority on the proposed joint board in exchange for continued News funding. Late on December 4, it was reported that Optus and Foxtel had settled the rugby league war between them. The ARL premiership (run by the NSW Rugby League) lost almost $4.5 million in 1997.
“We’d send off Neil with responses to various things over months,” Millward recalls. “‘Yes’, ‘no’, ‘we’ll accept that but we’ll reject that’.
“Look, it had gone on for months and months. They were down at the Sheraton on the Park. We used to have a meeting, they’d have a meeting, we’d send Geoff Carr down there and they’d send ... sometimes it would be, what’s his name, (Kevin) Neil from Canberra, he’d come and talk to us.
“It went on for weeks until ... it was News Limited’s desire, and ours, that we should have a merged competition for 1998.
“And we left it a bit late. It was Friday the 19th of December, 1997.”
A NSW bid to unseat John McDonald as chairman of the ARL early in December had been thwarted. McDonald appeared to have been saved by the vote of Bellew, who was retiring. From Brisbane, McDonald, Lockwood and Whittaker then flew out - together - to continue meetings with Super League in Sydney!
A $20 million upgrade at Campbelltown Stadium was touted as guaranteeing Western Suburbs’ future. It was reported ARL Sydney clubs wanted to be guaranteed two years in the new competition or they would vote against compromise.
And so back to the old SFS, demolished in 2019.
“There was a bit of standing around between meetings,” John Brady recalls. “Separate rooms had been organised at the SFS and Cricket Ground - a lot of thought had gone in to scheduling the legal order of the decisions.
“No club could have fairly said they were dragged into it. The mood was one of both an opportunity to end it and a chance to get going. They all knew the terms of the deal so there was a bit of apprehension about how it would play out but mostly I reckon a bit of relief that there was some funding ahead.
“I think some were of the view the criteria could never end up putting them out so ‘do the deal anyway’. Others were thinking more long term about the opportunities that might come. Others were looking for less teams not more. They all knew how much they were struggling financially. Souths knew that more than anyone.
“Most of all I think it was relief that the war was over, no matter how much they did or didn’t trust the other side.”
Over at the Super League hotel, Kevin Neil recalls: “Frykberg got a call to say ‘yeah’, it’s all agreed to. He came up to me and thanked me for my efforts. He could have done that to everyone in the room, I don’t know.”
Finally, mid-afternoon, It was announced at the subsequent media conference that peace had been made; 20 teams would compete in 1998, to be reduced to 14 by 2000. Balmain and South Sydney voted against the proposals. “I honestly believe ... that if the ARL clubs had stuck together and toughed it out one more season, in 1998, that Super League would have fallen on its face and News Limited would have packed up bags and departed poorer, but wiser,” George Piggins later wrote.
“That belief is the reason we voted against the ‘amalgamation’ plan.
“By the end of ’97 the ARL was no more than a Clayton’s organisation because the game belonged to Murdoch.
“I did my best to convince the ARL clubs that we were in front and should keep going.
“There was plenty of wheeling and dealing going on in the background and I doubt we were being told the full story at any stage as Neil Whittaker (ARL) and Ian Frykberg (Super League) worked in secret.
“There were a lot of lies at the time about the inflated financial standings of ARL clubs.
“I have no doubt many of the ARL clubs saw the prospect of News Limited money in a united competition as a godsend, as something that could rescue them from the deep shit they were in.
“The amount of double dealing that went on in the lead-up to the ‘historic’ meetings of December 19th, 1997, which sticky-taped the game back together, was bloody breath-taking.”
McDonald, not Whittaker, had the honour of making the announcement.
Kelly recalls: “Word leaked out eventually from the Football Stadium that it looked like there was a deal and then we all had to rush into the city for this big announcement that a deal had been done and then News did one (a media conference).
“And the ARL did their press conference at the footy stadium.
“Later we heard anecdotally from a number of clubs who were at the Football Stadium that they had the radio on and they were listening to what we were saying. They didn’t feel they could trust the other clubs, they didn’t know what was going on with the other clubs.
“They were five corporate suites apart and the deal was that no-one was allowed to go in and try and influence them. They had to come to their own individual decisions.”
The National Rugby League Championship Company would be owned equally by News and the Leagues. The Hunter Mariners were closed down (“I had a very good financial controller,” recalls Bob Ferris. “Her husband was an insolvency expert. She was able to wind the company up and sell everything off with ease, without going for expert help. One day we just got up and walked out. I thought it was a sad day but I look back on it and I think it was the best time of my life. We sent everything back. We had half a store room of Nike shoes. Because I wasn’t from football, I didn’t think about taking anything. I don’t have anything except memories.”). There would be a maximum of eight clubs from Sydney in the final 14 and a minimum of six.
Brisbane, Newcastle and Auckland were immediately granted five year licenses. Clubs which merged would receive $4 million in 1998 and $3 million in 1999 and get five-year licences. Licences for 2000 were to be issued on July 31, 1999.
Lachlan Murdoch said in a statement: “What we have done today is ensure the survival and prosperity of rugby league. This is the best outcome for all parties - clubs, fans, players, the ARL and Super League.”
The salary cap was to go down to $3 million. Before the war, clubs were spending between $1.2 million and $3 million.
The Herald reported an afternoon phone call in which News agreed to a $100 million payment over the following 12 months had been the clincher. The vote was 36-4. Uncertainty over Optus funding beyond October 1998 was a key factor in the ARL clubs voting the way they did.
The agreement guaranteed the ARL clubs $3.5 million each the following year.
“It was made clear to us that we’ve got seven months in order to get a licence to be one of the 16 teams in 1999,” Balmain’s Keith Barnes said. News received first and last rights of refusal on TV rights for 25 years.
Norths members, in December, had voted in favour of the club moving to Gosford. As a North Sydney fan, Professor Andrew Moore claimed in a scholarly paper that the ARL had “capitulated” to News. North Sydney managed to be considered a regional club - but Illawarra were not.
(Millward explained that the Steelers had been forced to surrender their regional status in order to be accepted to the Sydney premiership in 1982. They were allowed back into the Country Rugby League and yet to this day are considered by the NRL to be a Sydney club, meaning Newcastle can host finals on weekends that Wollongong cannot.
“We had the best of both worlds,” Millward argues. “We could be city when it suited us, we could be country when it suited us.”)
News was barred from providing additional funds to help their own clubs survive. Packer’s pay TV contract with the league, which started the war despite him not having a pay TV station, was due to expire in 2000. Matthew Kidman wrote at the time: “One thing is for certain: rugby league is not going to drive subscriber numbers higher for Optus or Foxtel in the immediate future - and supposedly that was what the rugby league war was all about.”
Ken Arthurson commented: “The deal is not what I would have liked but in a compromise you can’t get everything you want.” Agents and lawyers were reported to have made more than $30 million from the war since 1995.
“We had to get this home today,” Whittaker told the media. “Providing Optus, Foxtel and Channel Nine can confirm additional funding packages, we will have a 20-team competition in 1998.”
The Sweeney Report had discovered league fans wanted to know the future of junior league development was in good hands. People no longer cared who was to blame. “A tinge of sadness exists over the need to finally sell half of this great game to a media organisation in order to survive,” wrote Phil Gould
The Herald reported Fykberg would receive a success fee if he could negotiate a united competition of which News were at least half owners.
“Congratulations” shouted reporter Tony Peters at the start of the media conference.. “Yeah thanks,” responded Whittaker.
High above Sydney 25 years later, Neil Whittaker tries to deconstruct what happened that day.
“There were two stories to a lot of clubs,” Whittaker says. “There were the people who knew how well the clubs were going, what they wanted and there was what they were saying publicly.
“So there were a lot of negotiations behind the scenes on getting mergers together ... when I got there, there were merger talks happening between clubs. They were down to memorandums of understanding on what they were going to do. That was happening at a pace.
“During that year I did not spend so much time on that because it was only if you wanted to do it, you could do it. I think St George and Illawarra were the only two that joined together towards the end of that season (actually in ’98)
“There was a lot of politics.”
But why did the Sydney Super League clubs survive as stand alone entities? Even the CEO of the ARL in 1997 will eventually admit the stark truth of that.
Because they signed with Super League.
“There was a whole lot of .... It’s hard to condense down to a short sentence but we had 22 teams and we had to get down to 14 or 16. It was a process where we just worked our way through.
“We eventually got to a point where we understood what News Limited’s position was and why and then the Gold Coast and Crushers ... another southern Queensland team would have been good but they were casualties.
“The Mariners closed, Adelaide and Perth went (at the end of ’98), Auckland stayed and commercially that turned out to be one of the better decisions that was made and Frykers knew that. The value of the TV rights in New Zealand was outstanding in the early days and it got better and better.”
Staring straight back at me after further quizzing, Whittaker says bluntly: “Everyone who wants to sit and judge what happened didn’t understand that I was sitting there with 12 clubs and a comp with no money and there’s 10 other clubs sitting there with News Limited with plenty of dough. How was it going to be fair?
“We had to try and come up with an idea that got everybody back in and being looked after in the same way. The merged clubs got a lot of money. That money was paid for by News Limited.
“And that was after the event. The ones that had jumped, there were obligations for (News) to look after them. But they pushed hard. I can tell you that mergers between News Limited clubs were pushed as hard or harder because they didn’t want to keep putting the money in. So there was an issue that the money might be there but there was also a big driver, to not have to put another cent into rugby league.
“Have a look at the comp now. Have a look at how successful rugby league has been since that time. It’s still got 16 teams, I think.
“There was a really strong view, supported by people on both sides, that it should have been 14 and it should have been (two rounds), home and away. We got down to 16. The process we used to get down to 16, I would not recommend to anybody.”
Fykberg, Whittaker says, had originally championed a far-reaching and, depending on how it would have affected you, brutal approach.
“Frykers wanted to restructure the whole game, right through, all the way down. My view was that that was too hard. We had to get the comp working first and then restructure the game later ... there wouldn’t have been rugby league played in 1998.
“Turns out, it took 15 years to do that but we got to a commission which is probably where we were meant to be and I had their (News Limited’s) word that they would work towards (further rationalisation) but they wouldn’t put a timeframe around it.
“That’s when we agreed we would form some competition and there were a number of names thrown around for it but the National Rugby League is what came up in the end. That’s how it got set up, with rotating chairmen and board seats and all that sort of stuff. Ken Cowley said publicly that I shouldn’t be chief executive. He was quite clear on his position.”
As I’ve said repeatedly here, one of the major negotiating points was whether the new body took on News’ debt and, says Whittaker, “we didn’t. We didn’t take on any of their debt. They kept their debt and we ran the competition.
“He (Frykberg) was using that to negotiate with us, to get control. We said ‘you’ve invested that money and that’s your business’. But it did mean we had to give them an opportunity to make their money back, so....”
And does THAT mean the NRL gave News favourable commercial conditions as part of the peace deal? They did get first right of refusal on television rights, after all, and it was years before the NRL could be truly regarded as being independent of the media company....
“No, no. Not really. They may have but we didn’t do it deliberately. Look, they got the terms they needed to be able to manage their investment and we got a game that was unencumbered by that investment and it was an unbelievably good result.
“We didn’t have money to pay for our legal fees so they paid those too. “
Whittaker now reveals, several months of the 1998 season were played without a written television contract in place.
Even on the day the NRL was formed, the ARL delegation went away having to find hundreds of thousands of dollars in a matter of days. “The announcement was made that there were some funding issues to be resolved,” Whittaker says now. “Frykers wouldn’t have allowed us to say that if he wasn’t confident that we’d get there.
“There were some caveats on me and our team, that we had to go away and get more money for the ARL clubs. There was an appropriate concern that the Super League clubs would continue to be funded by News Limited and would have all the money and our clubs would struggle financially.
“That was on the Friday and I had until Monday to do that - otherwise the mandate I had expired ... at the end of Monday.
“And on the Wednesday, which was Christmas Eve, we still didn’t have it done.
“Geoff Carr and I and Johnny Brady were sitting in a coffee shop in Martin Place looking at the window of our lawyers MinterEllison and at three o’ clock on Christmas Eve we got the signed documents from News Limited ... from the parties, there were a number of parties that had to provide funding.
“We got the money and we got the documents signed.”
Shane Richardson reflects: “Brave decisions had to be made but the decisions were not about bravery, they were all about just trying to patch it back together.
“So you sell off your mate over here to save your mate over there. Going broke is the reason they got rid of a lot of clubs - the Crushers, Adelaide, they would have all gone bust. The peripheral players just didn’t have the money.”
And at 2.55pm, as the media conference to announce a new era in rugby league concluded, the SFS was engulfed in a wild electrical storm.
POSTSCRIPT: Damian Kelly insisted I must interview North Shore restaurateur Stanley Lee for this chapter. “The late great John Brennan who was the boss of 2UE at the time said to us ... we had six or seven reporters who were on the story that day ... ‘head to Lee’s Fortuna Court ‘ - which is still a favourite of media people but it was a big 2UE haunt because it’s just down the road from 2UE.
“We used to go there all the time. We had Christmas parties there. It was the sort of place ... it’s got all sporting memorabilia on the walls, the West Indies cricket team would go there. It’s this famous media and sporting restaurant. Stan Zemanek had his own bottle of scotch there that he’d just leave there.
“Brenno said ‘I’ll pay the bill as recognition of the job you’ve done’ so I’ve walked in and Stanley said ‘you guys have picked the wrong night to be here’ and we said ‘no, no we’re celebrating, peace in our time and all that’.
“He said ‘no, last night was the night to be here’. I said ‘what are you talking about?’.
He said ‘that table over there - Neil Whittaker and Ian Frykberg did the deal and we toasted it with a glass of port at the end of the night’.”
Alas, when I contacted him in mid-2021, Stanley Lee has no direct recollection of that momentous toast.
“It’s probably true because Frykers would come here all the time,” said Lee, who counts Ken Arthurson as a regular.
“As you come in the restaurant, he would sit in the corner, on the left hand side and he always wanted two chairs, one to sit on and one to put his arm on.”
He is taking reservations for the same table on December 18, 2022 if you’re interested.
RESOURCES
Steve talks the NRL’s birth with SEN Sydney
