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 have touched on the teams that never made it out of the NSWRL, as well as those who could not survive the times of the Super League war, but now it is time to explore the 2 clubs that fell away at the beginning of the NRL era.
Adelaide rams: 1997-1998
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Adelaide, the final frontier of the NRL. It will never work, but that doesn’t mean the league won’t keep trying to conquer it by putting Origin games in the city sporadically. The city is dominated completely by AFL, even more so than other AFL territories such as Victoria and Perth, as at least they had a presence of Rugby Union to build on when NRL came to town. Adelaide has none of that, its Australian Footy, Soccer, Cricket or nothing.
But in 1997, the Super League reckoned they could make an Adelaide club work and the Rams were born. To be fair to them they had a crack and they managed to hold the state’s attention for a while, averaging over 15,000 people at every home game in their first season. Not only this but they managed to snag the marquee signing of Australian Kangaroo Kerrod Walters to be their captain, which set them up for potential success. But the rest of the roster was made up of leftover scraps from free agents around the ARL, which meant little success on the field. They finished second last in their first-ever season and their future looked uncertain headed into the Super League Merger. But due to the ARL’s long-time ambition to expand into Adelaide, they kept the Rams going.
However, 1998 continued to be dire times with very little success. Winning just 1 game from their first 10 and then finished the season with 7 wins and 17 losses after numerous lineup shuffles and a sacked coach. Yet, the NRL was still keen to keep them on, despite the crowds no longer showing up in droves and not a player in the competition wanting to touch the stink that was coming off the Rams, because, you know, Adelaide will love NRL, they just don’t know it yet! Except, they won’t and News Limited withdrew the financial backing and the team was left penniless and dropped from the league much to the NRL’s disappointment.
Where are their players now? Well, Kerrod Walters is living a quiet life after surviving a heart attack at just 45 years old! And the only other player of note, Michael Maguire was last seen getting sacked by the Tigers from the coaching role due to them having even less success than the Rams, because somehow that’s possible!
Gold Coast Chargers: 1987-1998
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I really could write an entire book on the craziness that was the first iteration of Gold Coast-based rugby league in the NRL. However, I will try to break it down pretty briefly.
They entered in 1987 as the young and naive cousins of the Broncos as the Gold Coast-Tweed Giants brought into the league along with Newcastle and of course, the Broncos. They were formed purely out of spite because their older cousins in Brisbane had beaten them to the punch for a QLD bid. So they got some more cash, and a better pitch and swindled the NSWRL into thinking the team was financially viable. They weren’t. But at least they had fans with a solid enough amount of people showing up each week. But they were no good on the field and finished second last in their first year.
3 years later and they were renamed the Gold Coast Seagulls, dropping the Tweed name but remaining at their established home ground of Seagull Stadium in Tweed Heads. It did nothing to change their fortunes and they were back down the ladder. Continuing their swindling ways, in 1991 they managed to convince the king of the game, Wally Lewis, to play for them and then in 1992 they convinced him to captain/coach!
The Wally Lewis experiment failed and sadly the king had to retire as a loser, collecting the wooden spoon, but hey at least he won his final game ever, that is touching.
In 1996, local millionaire Jeff Muller thought he could do better and bought the club turning them into the Gladiators, but they never even took the field with the license being revoked before the beginning of the season.
That’s when they very quickly rebranded themselves the Chargers for the beginning of the 1996 season and that is the identity they remained with until their final days. Little success followed, except the year of the Super League, where they remained loyal to the ARL and were rewarded with their best season ever, making the semi-finals and things looked up for the first time in club history. So much so that they turned down what would have later been a saving grace in a merger with the Hunter Mariners.
They finished second last the following year and due to a lack of funds and clear board direction the club was disbanded at the end of 1998. Rugby League wasn’t seen in Gold Coast until 2007 when the NRL unveiled the Gold Coast Titans and their results have been mixed, to say the least. Maybe in 10 years time when I revisit this retrospective, the Titans will also be on the list of failed Gold Coast teams, only times will tell.
Well, those are the 2 teams that couldn’t survive the early days of the NRL! Were/are you a fan of the Rams or the Chargers? Let us know some of your favourite memories of the teams in the comments below!
Join us next time in the final instalment of this retrospective series where we take a look at the 6 teams who managed to survive due to merging with each other!