The Hunter Mariners were an Australian rugby league club based in the Hunter Valley region's largest city, Newcastle. Hunter was formed in mid 1995 and was later disbanded at the end of 1997. The club was formed because of the Super League war, which was the rivalry between the traditional Australian Rugby League competition and the new media driven Super League competition. The team competed in the inaugural and only Super League season in 1997, as well as that year's World Club Challenge.
The Mariners faced much adversity in the Newcastle region because of the Australian Rugby League's Newcastle Knights team being already well-established in the region. The club played its home games at Topper Stadium and missed out on the finals of the 1997 Super League season, but made the grand final of the World Club Challenge. The team was overshadowed by the Newcastle Knights who won the ARL competition and were admitted into the 1998 re-united competition. The Mariners were disbanded after being left out of the new competition because they believed that the Hunter region could not support two entities.
Read more about Hunter Mariners: Representative Players, Players
Famous quotes containing the words hunter and/or mariners:
“Verily, the Indian has but a feeble hold on his bow now; but the curiosity of the white man is insatiable, and from the first he has been eager to witness this forest accomplishment. That elastic piece of wood with its feathered dart, so sure to be unstrung by contact with civilization, will serve for the type, the coat-of-arms of the savage. Alas for the Hunter Race! the white man has driven off their game, and substituted a cent in its place.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Ye Mariners of England
That guard our native seas!
Whose flag has braved a thousand years
The battle and the breeze!”
—Thomas Campbell (1774–1844)