Australian Rugby League - History

History

See also: Super League war

Initially formed as the Australian Rugby League Board of Control on December 1924, it was created to administer the running of the national team. George Ball was the first secretary of the Board and John La Maro the first chairman. Prior to this time, international rugby league was organised by both the NSWRL and the QRL. It was only after this time that the Australian team began to wear the now familiar sporting colours of Green and Gold.

Until 1984 the ARL was run by the NSWRL board, and many Queensland players and administrators throughout this period believed that the NSWRL used this power to the detriment of Queenslanders, especially with respect to national team selection. In 1984 the ARL was duly incorporated, as a separate entity, and Ken Arthurson was the first executive chairman of the new body. With national expansion of the competition implemented for the 1995 season the NSWRL passed control of the Winfield Cup competition to the ARL.

Following Kerry Packer's announcement that his Optus Vision company owned both free-to-air and pay television broadcasting rights for the sport in Australia, News Corporation, controlled by Rupert Murdoch, undertook a bold bid to create a rival competition, Super League (Australia). Super League successfully attracted eight of the ARL clubs.

In the State of Origin series of 1995, the ARL forbade the players of those eight clubs from participating in the interstate competition. However, those clubs were allowed to participate in the premiership seasons of 1995 and 1996, while the ARL fought in the courtroom to stop the Super League competition from eventuating. However, Super League conducted a rival competition in 1997.

Both the ARL and Super League competitions ran parallel to each other that year. At the close of the season, despite having the financial backing of Optus, the ARL decided that it was not in the best interests of the game to run two competitions and undertook moves to approach News Corporation and invite the traditional clubs back into the main competition. As a consequence of the negotiations that followed, the National Rugby League was formed before the 1998 season from the ARL and Super League competitions.

Between 1998 season and the first few months of the 2012 season the ARL had six out of twelve seats on the NRL Partnership board. In 2012 News Limited exited the game and the ARL was dissolved, handing control over to a new, independent Australian Rugby League Commission.

Read more about this topic:  Australian Rugby League

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    “I believe that in the history of art and of thought there has always been at every living moment of culture a “will to renewal.” This is not the prerogative of the last decade only. All history is nothing but a succession of “crises”Mof rupture, repudiation and resistance.... When there is no “crisis,” there is stagnation, petrification and death. All thought, all art is aggressive.”
    —Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)

    “The view of Jerusalem is the history of the world; it is more, it is the history of earth and of heaven.”
    —Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881)

    “The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.”
    —Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)