March 1, 1997: Super League Australasia kicks off (book extract)
How Two Tribes covers the first day of the breakaway competition, 25 years ago today.
SATURDAY would later become a bit of a lost day for rugby league before bouncing back in the last decade with the prefix otherwise discredited: “Super”.
But Saturday March 1, 1997, is when Super League launched in Australia. The first actual match was to be Brisbane v the Warriors at ANZ Stadium followed a few minutes later by North Queensland v Adelaide at Stockland Stadium.
Another taste of the ridiculous; the entertainment - featuring Yothu Yindi and an Olympic-style opening ceremony - ran overtime at the venue of the 1982 Commonwealth Games so the first game of the competition was not the first game at all - North Queensland-Adelaide kicked off first! A pre-match ‘good luck’ video shown in Brisbane featured controversial politician Pauline Hanson, film critic John Hinde and shock jock Stan Zemanek.
After Brisbane beat the Warriors 14-2 in front of 42,361 people at ANZ Stadium, Rebecca Wilson tried to get Broncos coach Wayne Bennett to sit down at the media conference, as would be the new professional standard that season, imported from sports leagues overseas.
Previously, the almost exclusively male press corps would crowd around the coach in the dressing room while players showered and changed nearby.
“I’ve been standing up and doing it this way for years, Rebecca, and that’s the way I’m going to do it now,” Bennett said, rebuking the PR in the room just off the tunnel, set aside for the post-match media conference.
Bennett’s reticence about post-match media conferences would be a recurring theme the following years. That night, Wilson was probably more concerned when he said to journalists - the fancy backdrop sitting useless a few feet away - “We all know it’s not the best of the best because there’s not one competition.”
The game had featured 42 errors; the Gilbert balls were blamed and replaced in round two by training balls - but not in time for Monday, when Cronulla were hoping Canberra dropped the pill as often as possible.
Warriors fullback Matthew Ridge tried to kick one of the faux pigskins from the grasp of Broncos prop Glenn Lazarus as he scored a try, knocking him out. The practice would eventually be banned from rugby league. Another controversial St George-Brisbane transfer, Anthony Mundine, suffered a leg injury.
“Now we can get on with putting this game of rugby league on the world stage,” Lazarus told Fox Sports at full-time.
Although he had played in the Nines, Gorden Tallis marked his comeback to club play that night. Tallis had sat out the 1996 season rather than return to St George, with whom he had a contract. His decision had cost him a grand final appearance.
During his year off, he had begun to date a woman who became his (now ex-) wife.
“I had got to know Gorden as a kind, gentle person,” Christine Tallis said in the forward’s biography, Raging Bull. “Obviously I was interested to see this guy I had been dating for a year play football.
“I’d have to say it was a shock. You’d have to describe him on the field as being the complete opposite of the Gorden I’d got to know.
“I still can’t see how a genuinely soft person can be so aggressive when he plays football.”
Mundine, played in the centres for the Broncos. “I was actually quite happy that we’d signed Anthony because he was a very good footballer,” said Kevin Walters, with whom “The Man” was competing for the no.6 jersey.
“Everyone loves a challenge as a player, as well. I loved his time in Brisbane. We always got on well and I certainly appreciated his skill and personality. He actually fitted in well at the Broncos. He ended up playing in the centres and was a good team fella. He was a great asset for us.”
The next day at the Ansett check-in counter, I clearly recall pop star Belinda Carlisle collecting her boarding pass. The former singer of The GoGos had performed the previous night in front of 42,000 but was in for a culture shock later that day at wet and muddy Penrith, where 8398 saw the Panthers beat Perth 30-20.
“The one I will never forget is her getting out of the helicopter at Penrith,” says Paul Kind, “literally almost staggering to the stage, getting blown away with high heels in the middle of a footy field... to sing ‘Heaven is a Place on Earth’ to a rugby league crowd at Penrith.”
Promoter Andrew McManus, who decades later told a court he had lied to police over a deal to borrow $200,000 from an organised crime figure, had been charged with sourcing international acts. “There was no Bruce Springsteen and that is what had been openly discussed in media going back 18 months before,” Kind recalls
“They bought every ground that didn’t have a sound system, a sound system. You’re dropping these artists and these sound systems into suburban grounds, many of which aren’t that different today.
“Without being disrespectful to the talent, you wouldn’t call it world class. But it cost money. It wasn’t cheap. It was an expensive exercise in doing the best you could do in a short timeframe.”
This was the debut at Penrith of Sydney Kings basketball stadium announcer Rodney Overby, whose American-accented exhortations of “east side!”, “west side!” were never truly embraced by rugby league traditionalists.
Afterwards, Perth’s Mark Geyer took exception to a question asked of coach Dean Lance at the media conference and seemed to challenge a local reporter to a fight. The journo had asked if the Reds had played better when ‘MG’ was off the field.
“That’s a fair bag,” Geyer said from the back of the room - he was not involved in the media conference until then. “Is that me you’re bagging? Talk to me about it, what do you think?”
Our fourth estate roundsman was not cowed, repeating the question to Lance. “How can you say that?” Geyer responded, before storming off.
it should read just as he said it,” Penrith media manager Rob Weaver said.
“MG had walked in just as he said it,” Rob Weaver recalls. “He got to within six inches of this bloke’s face. We all thought he was going to lift him up and put him on one of the clothes pegs.
“I went after him. He came back and attended the conference.”
GAMES
Super League Australasia round one: