With the NRL expanding to a 17-team competition this year by adding the Redcliffe Dolphins or just ‘The Dolphins’ as the league is hell-bent on calling them, it got me thinking about all the previous clubs that have come and gone in this great league of ours. Some are still kicking as we know, come on the mighty Newtown Jets! Whereas others died a very abrupt and hopefully painless death and haven’t been seen since their departure from the comp. So let’s take a look at all 17 of them and see where they did indeed end up!
We’ve already touched on the teams that came out of the NSWRL system and never made it to the point where the prominent competition in the country became the ARL (Australian Rugby League) and certainly never made it to the point where the Super League was created.
For those of you not already in the know, the Super League was a 1-season off-shoot Rugby League competition run by News Limited in a bid to get exclusive Pay TV rights to the sport of Rugby League. It consisted of 10 teams, 8 original ARL members (Aukland, Brisbane, Canberra, Canterbury, Cronulla, North Queensland, Penrith and the Western Reds) and 2 brand-new teams (Hunter Mariners and Adelaide). At the end of the first season, the league merged with the ARL and formed the NRL (National Rugby League), but like all mergers, not everybody survived. Let’s explore the 3 teams that didn’t survive the Super League – Hunter Mariners (SL), South Queensland Crushers (ARL) and the Western Reds (SL).
Hunter Mariners: 1997-1997
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This team was always doomed to fail, wasn’t it? Brought into the Super League simply to have representation of the Rugby League diehard regions of Newcastle and Gosford, however, the regions were already fiercely loyal to the Knights. Thus began a cross-town rivalry that saw the Mariners spanked at every which turn as the Knights were older, more popular and way more successful (They famously won the ARL Premiership that year, it was better than lego!). The Mariners played out of Topper Stadium, which is now The Gardens Dog Track and even though the seats could hold 11,000, the closest they ever got was 7,000, with the average home crowd landing around the 4,000 mark, with away fans usually dominating the stands.
They started the season poorly and ended it poorly as well, but any Mariners fans out there will remember the middle of the season fondly, where they would win 6 out of 8 games in a 2-month stretch that saw them almost make the 5-team finals system. But unfortunately, they finished 6th, being beaten by the Sharks 16-28 in their final ever game. However, their 1997 World Club Challenge run was the stuff of legend, somehow managing an 8-game undefeated run all the way to the final where they were beaten by the Super League premiers from that year – Brisbane.
When it came time to merge the leagues decided, quite rightly, that the city of Newcastle couldn’t sustain 2 teams and deservedly the Mariners were given the boot in favour of the Knights. What happened to the players you ask? Some retired, some went to England, and others were dispersed amongst other NRL clubs, but a good chunk of them was picked up by the Super League’s final creation that would go on to dominate the NRL for years to come – the Melbourne Storm. The most significant of those 6 was a young man by the name of Brett Kimmorely, who eagle-eyed readers will spot in the back row of that team photo above. Kimmorely went on to play 307 NRL games and managed to snag 10 games for NSW and 22 for Australia. He was last seen as the interim coach of the 2022 Wests Tigers outfit.
South Queensland Crushers: 1995-1997
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Before the Dolphins became a second Brisbane-based NRL club, the South Queensland Crushers invented the concept. In 1995, Brisbane was deemed a large enough Rugby League heartland to sustain 2 clubs, despite the entire city being fiercely loyal to the Broncos and extremely admissive to a second club. But you can’t knock them for trying and they started to garner a niche following that saw decent crowds show up to Suncorp Stadium in support of them on a weekly basis. The best thing that could have ever happened to them was the Broncos ditching the ARL for the Super League, meaning at that point, the Crushers were the premiere Brisbane-based team in the ARL.
The club’s extreme wealth saw them drop large sums of money on the heads of some extremely talented players such as Trevor Gillmeister, Mario Fenech, Dale Shearer, Tony Kemp and Terry Cook, but the team could never really click and no matter how many stars donned the Aztec Gold jumpers the Crushers couldn’t manage a finish higher than 16th in their 3-year history. They also finished with the wooden spoon in their final 2 seasons, only managing 7 wins across the final 2 years and 13 in their overall history. Unfortunately, their willy-nilly spending on players as well as some questionable spending elsewhere saw them become extremely unstable in the financial department, which in the end made their removal from the comp in the Super League merger a no-brainer. At least they won their final game, which is something that many in this retrospective series cannot say.
Hopefully, The Dolphins have greater success in the River City than the Crushers did.
Western Reds: 1995-1997
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Another team that only saw a 3-year foray into the top level of Rugby League and boy did they have a crack and are still having a crack to this day (more on that later). The Western Reds were created when the ARL wanted to go fully national and that meant having a team in just about every state and the previously unexplored Western Australia was given a team. It was ambitious, as the state didn’t really know what Rugby League was as they barely even paid attention to their Rugby Union team with eyes fixed solely on the sport of AFL. However, they decided to give league a try and they packed out the WACA to watch their local team best St George 28-16 in a spiriting affair. From there, the Reds managed medium levels of success and were the winningest expansion team in 1995, finishing in 11th.
However, their demise was written in stone the second they pledged allegiance to the Super League and left the ARL to join the rebel league. Their final ARL season in 1996 was dismal, as the court cases to do with the Super League caused too much of a distraction, games were forfeited and crowd numbers took a severe dive. Their success on the field didn’t improve come 1997 when the new league actually kicked off and the Perth Population soon got bored with their new Rugby League toy and ran back to the AFL who waited with open arms. With no crowds or on-field success, much like the Crushers, they found themselves in severe debt and were swiftly kicked out of the competition following the Super League/ARL merger.
Notable players to don the red, black and yellow kits were legends of the game Robbie Kearns and brothers Matt and Mark Geyer, all of whom had prosperous careers elsewhere with numerous games played at the representative level, Kearns in particular, who managed to play over 20 games for Australia. Much like the Hunter Mariner players, many Reds alumni got snapped up by the Melbourne Storm.
Fortunately, for the tens of Rugby League fans still left in Perth, the team has yet to give up re-entering the competition ever since they left. Whenever the NRL discusses expansion possibilities Perth is the first to launch its bid. Bids were made in 2010, 2012, and 2020 along with the rest of the bids that eventually went to The Dolphins. However, the state apparently plans on launching more bids in 2024 and 2026. Bids have come under numerous names – WA Reds, Perth Reds, West Coast Reds, West Coast Pirates and most recently West Coast Quokkas. None have been successful obviously, but the NRL decided to throw the state a bone and give them an SG Ball team (Under 18’s) under the Pirates name to test the waters if the region could ever be explored again. Don’t give up yet Perth!
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Well, those are the 3 teams that couldn’t survive the Super League/ARL Merger! Were/are you a fan of any of the 3 teams? Let us know some of your favourite memories of the teams in the comments below!
Join us in the 3rd instalment for the 2 clubs that found themselves booted out of the competition in the early days of the NRL Era!