The 2005 NRL Grand Final was the conclusive and premiership-deciding game of the National Rugby League's 2005 Telstra Premiership season. It was played on the night of Sunday, 2 October at Sydney's Telstra Stadium between 4th-placed Wests Tigers and 5th-placed North Queensland Cowboys, the only two clubs in the competition that hadn't yet been to the NRL grand final. The game set a new record for the highest television audience in Australia for a rugby league match since the introduction of the OzTam ratings system in 2001.
In a match-up suggested by bookmakers as a 500/1 chance for the 2005 grand final's opponents at the start of the season, the fourth-placed Wests Tigers and fifth-placed North Queensland Cowboys had both reached their first decider. The two teams had met three times during the regular season, with the Tigers having won twice. The most recent of these meetings was the Tigers' 50 – 6 victory in the first week of the finals series.
Read more about 2005 NRL Grand Final: Match Day, 2006 World Club Challenge
Famous quotes containing the words grand and/or final:
“The allurement that women hold out to men is precisely the allurement that Cape Hatteras holds out to sailors: they are enormously dangerous and hence enormously fascinating. To the average man, doomed to some banal drudgery all his life long, they offer the only grand hazard that he ever encounters. Take them away, and his existence would be as flat and secure as that of a moo-cow.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“Dignity: the doomed man’s final refuge.”
—Max Frisch (1911–1991)