October 21, 1995: Players' pay revealed in court
A couple of days before the World Cup semis, wages are published in Sydney
Extrapolating backwards, if that is possible, I would have been very happy on October 21, 1995, that I was not the Sydney Morning Herald’s main correspondent at the World Cup.
Because that day, player payments were revealed in court back in Sydney. Had I been the guy with a nice hotel room at the Leeds Holiday Inn, it would have been my job to get those players’ reactions to the revelations.
Instead, that was Roy Masters’ job. I was dossing on floors and couches and doing a bit of freelance work, which allowed me to go to games other than the Aussies’ pool matches, semi-finals (not enough teams back then for quarters) and finals.
It was the perfect arrangement - except when one of my colleagues on full expenses with a nice hotel room (not Roy!) managed to find himself a female companion one night and I found myself sleeping in the rental car, waking up with people going to work around me.
Anyway, these clippings make intriguing reading, I’m sure you’ll agree.
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If you sign up as a subscribe here, you get my first book Touchstones in the mail pretty much straight away, you get Two Tribes when it comes out and you get 27 months of content here - right up until the 25th anniversary of the NRL being formed on December 19, 2022.
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GRAPHIC
RESOURCES
Super League War Wikipedia entry
Super League War timeline from the Sydney Morning Herald
Economic and social impact of Super League in the UK - university paper