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!
For our final edition of this retrospective, we get to look at the 6 clubs that managed to forge their way through the fire and merge with one another to remain in the league for years to come, with the majority of them still being in the league today. Let’s get into it!
Balmain Tigers: 1908-1999
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Talking about the Tigers, the boys from Balmain have a long-standing history in the competition, as they were a founding member and are even still in the NRL, in the form of the Wests Tigers merger with Western Suburbs, more on that later.
The team was founded in 1908 as one of the first-ever rugby league clubs and the roster was made up almost exclusively of the Balmain Rugby Union team and they were quickly nicknamed the Tigers after their intended Black and Gold hoops resembled more of an Orange and Black tiger look and the rest is history. The club was quite successful in their early days, consistently finishing in the top half of the table and managed to win 6 out of 10 possible premierships from 1915-1925. They could have been 1909 Premiers as well if they had bothered to show up to the game as an agreed boycott of the game between the Tigers and Souths was quickly backed out of by Souths who rocked up and collected a free title via forfeit, classic Tigers botch up that.
The next 70 years of their history was a rollercoaster of emotions for fans with years spent at the bottom and plenty of years at the top, especially in the 80s, as despite the team failing to produce a single premiership, they played finals just about every year and almost every home game at Leichhardt Oval was sold out. Steve Roach and Paul Sirronen led the charge as the stars with the likes of Benny Elias playmaking up a storm and captain Wayne Pearce keeping the team in line. They managed back-to-back grand finals in 88 and 89, but couldn’t capture the elusive title. Then the 90s came and the troubles started to emerge.
After 1990 they didn’t make the finals once and their on-field troubles mirrored their financial troubles behind closed doors. They even tried to move the team at one point, becoming the Sydney Tigers and playing out of Parramatta with terrible results and they quickly reverted back to their roots. At the turn of the millennium, the league made it clear that teams were on the chopping block as the competition was to be cut to 14 teams and stragglers everywhere scrambled to get the cash to make them financially viable or seek joint ventures to stay afloat. There were talks of a merger with Parramatta, boy what a sight that would have been, but instead the members voted to go with fellow foundation club Western Suburbs Magpies. Even though it was revealed that the NRL was happy to keep Balmain on as one of the 14 teams, the merger made the most financial sense and members were appeased to still have their team in the competition in one way or another.
So it was set, 2000 was to be the year of the West Tiger and their final game was to be played at the end of the 1999 season. 15,240 fans packed into Leichhardt Oval to watch their Tigers win over the Eels in a spirited contest.
In the merger, the club got to keep the Tigers identity and colours, as well as the Leichhardt Oval home ground which was a major positive for fans and the club still performs under the Wests Tigers moniker to this day.
Illawarra Steelers: 1982-1998
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Illawarra is a proud rugby league region and they tried to enter a team into the top competition at the time, the NSWRL, many times starting in the 1950s and popping up countless times until they were finally admitted in 1982 during a time of expansion that also saw Canberra join the league.
The first season wasn’t kind to the two new expansion teams as they shared the bottom of the table, Canberra taking the wooden spoon in last and the Steelers grabbing 13th place. This became a regular occurrence for the Steelers as they won the wooden spoon 3 times in their first 8 years, but it didn’t stop the Woolongong faithful from turning out every week to watch the boys in red and white.
Over the years many of the game’s top talents made their way to Illawarra with their most notable alumni being Trent Barret, Craig Fitzgibbon, Shaun Timmons, Rod Wishart and Paul McGregor, all of whom had successful careers after leaving the Steelers, with the latter 2 staying on with the merged St George team afterwards.
Speaking of the merger, this came about towards the back end of 1998 and like many clubs post Super League, they had little money to work with and with the NRL’s rapid plans to decrease the league to just 14 teams made up of the strongest clubs around, Illawarra went looking for a joint venture. They managed to snag one with the St George Dragons and the two clubs decided to join forces going forward as the first-ever NRL merger was made. It is also perhaps the strangest, as they are further apart geographically by far. The 2 HQs are a good hour and a half down the highway apart and it has created quite a disjointed club dynamic.
Many Illawarra fans claim the merger was more of a takeover, as St George kept basically every element of their identity including logo, jersey design and home ground with the only reference to Illawarra being the regions named being tacked onto the end, with most fans failing to say it whenever referring to the Dragons. The only element of the old Steelers that is left is the fact that the Dragons will play sporadic home games at WIN Stadium in Woolongong. Either way, they managed to survive potential bankruptcy and are still in the league, so that is something for Steelers fans to hold onto.
North Sydney Bears: 1908-1999
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North Sydney is one of the oldest clubs in Rugby League history as they are one of the nine foundation clubs and were formed out of the Northern Suburbs Rugby Union team in 1908. Before being dubbed the ‘Bears’ they were initially known as the ‘Shoremen’ as they were the only team that was from Sydney’s North Shore and teams had to travel quite a while to play them due to the lack of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, which wasn’t built for 25 years. They weren’t named the Bears until 1959 when the Big Bear Supermarket began sponsoring them.
Despite being one of the most popular clubs in the game’s history, with a strong legion of fans to this day, they never actually had much success on the field. 92 years in the competition and they only amounted to 2 single premierships and 7 wooden spoons, with most of their years spent in mid-table purgatory. In 1921, the Bears had arguably their best-ever season when coach Chris McKivat led them to an undefeated season that resulted in the club’s first-ever premiership. Their second? That followed just a year later with a dominant 30-point win over Glebe in the 1922 final. Unfortunately, after that, their form fell by the wayside again and that was the final time the club tasted Premiership success. That’s right, they spent the next 77 years without a single premiership, talk about droughts.
But despite the fact that on-field success was sparse, the red and black unit produced a plethora of generational talents. Billy Moore and Ken Irvine would have to be the most notable of the Bears alumni with both playing plenty of games at State of Origin and International levels. Irvine actually holds the all-time try-scoring record for the club, managing to snag 171 tries in just 176 games, a pretty good hit rate if you ask me!
Towards the end of the 90s the club was starting to look pretty dire financially and coupled with the fact that they couldn’t perform on the field there was a bid made for the club to move up the highway and be located in Gosford and be known as the Central Coast Bears. It all looked set, every party was happy, until it was decided that the NRL was going to be reduced to 14 clubs, which meant teams like the Bears who were on the outer were set to be kicked to the curb. To avoid this tragic end, they managed to put together a merger with Manly and the joint venture of the Northern Eagles was born, but that was doomed to fail, more on that later.
Since being removed from the competition, the Bears have managed to keep their league’s club open and retain a strong legion of fans, who helped pay off their extremely deep debts. Due to the fact that they’re still around in the NSW Cup, many have called for their return to the competition and they have entered bids on multiple occasions. Honestly, they’re probably the most likely defunct club to make their return to the comp. Their bids have ranged from the straight bat option of the proposed Central Coast Bears team of the 90s making a return, with the Perth Bears and Adelaide Bears also being floated as options. The wildest bid would have to be their most recent with the club being nomads with no set home ground and simply being known as ‘The Bears’ with their home games played in essentially every market that the NRL have looked at having a team without ever pulling the trigger – Perth, Adelaide, North Sydney, Gosford, the Riverina, Wagga Wagga, Coffs Harbour, Darwin and various other country regions. Yes, that is crazy and no, it will almost definitely not happen. But we can only hope that one day the Bears return to comp in one way or another.
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Northern Eagles: 2000-2002
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This was just never going to work, was it? North was forced into this merger, but Manly was not. They had fans, enough money and competition backing, so why would they strap themselves to one of the most struggling clubs in the league?
Players from both sides had to be tossed aside due to the salary cap and the new joint venture club lost the likes of John Hopoate, Ben Ikin, Gary Larson and Craig Field. Due to this, their on-field performances were average at best. They never finished higher than 9th and there were tonnes of backstage drama going on in the boardroom that didn’t help. The fanbase was constantly split, as the games were played at Brookvale (Manly’s Home) and Gosford, embracing the Central Coast Bears idea, but further alienating the original North Sydney Bears army.
So nobody was on board and questions were constantly raised at why the merger had even taken place at all. The league seemed to agree and moves began to be made to revert the clubs back to their original identities. However, North Sydney didn’t end up surviving this and they were tossed by the wayside, while Manly would continue on in the league to this day.
The only thing that the Eagles could really claim as a success is that the whole merger drama managed to skyrocket the Manly Sea Eagles’ popularity after every fan came out of the woodwork to demand their return to the competition.
St George Dragons: 1921-1998
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St George tried to be one of the foundation clubs but they couldn’t manage to get a team together due to pressure from their local Rugby Union team. However, after many many attempts, they got entry into the league in 1921.
They struggled pretty early as many of the clubs did when first entering the league, picking up the wooden spoon twice in their first 10 years in the league. But at the turn of the 30s, everything changed for the Dragons and they started to be really competitive. So competitive that in the next 50 years they managed to set premiership records and remain a consistent presence at the top of the table.
In this time the halls of St George were graced with the presence of legends of the game by the names of Johnny Raper, Norm Provan, Reg Gasnier and Graeme Langlands. They were all superstars in their own respective eras, especially Norm Provan, who of course was so iconic that he is now cemented in history on the Provan-Summons Trophy – the trophy awarded to the NRL Premiers every year. Not to mention that along with Provan, the 3 other names mentioned – Langlands, Raper and Gasnier are all immortals of the game, the highest possible honour any player can be awarded.
Merger talks for St George began in 1995 when they started to believe that it was the only way of long term survival with the Super League on the horizon and talks were held with Sydney Roosters to combine forced and become the Sydney City Saints, which would have been a super club of epic proportions. But those talks fell through and attention was quickly moved to a potential merger between the Dragons and Illawarra and Cronulla under the guise of the Southern Sharks. But obviously that didn’t happen due to fan backlash from the Dragons side. But in 1998, a merger was finally found and a deal with Illawarra was complete and the St George-Illawarra Dragons was created. Unlike the Steelers, the Dragons got to keep their entire identity in the merger and their fans are fully represented at every turn, in what many Steelers fans would call a hostile takeover.
At least they were right about something in that the merger in the fact that it was crucial to long term survival and the Dragons are still around to this day.
Western Suburbs Magpies: 1908-1999
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The little battlers that could. The boys from the West. The mighty Magpies. The Western Suburbs Magpies were the final foundation team to find themselves removed from existence and ask just about any of their fans and they’ll talk your ear off about how much of a crime it is the they’re no longer around.
Much like the North Sydney Bears that we disucessed earlier, despite an extremely strong legion of fans, they kind of stunk on the field. 92 seasons, 4 premierships, 8 times runner up and a solid 17 wooden spoons. Yep, they won the spoon on average once every 5 years or so, which explains why the modern day Wests Tigers are doomed to forever be locked into the bottom half of the table.
To be fair to Wests they were torpedoed by the league at almost every step of the way. See, back in the day, a club’s players had to live within the team’s recruitment zone and every time a new club was added, a large chunk of Wests’ territory was snatched up by the incoming club. For instance, when Canterbury were introduced, almost half of the Magpies’ 1934 Premiership side were forced to play for the Bulldogs, because they lived within the new Canterbury cachement zone. This was a problem that saw many of the smaller clubs go under, especially the likes of Newtown and Annandale.
The 30s was a great time for Magpies fans as they finally seemed to recover from constant lower table finishes to win a couple of premierships. One came in 1930 when captain-coach Jim Craig led them to a dominant 12 win out of a possible 14 games season that culminated in a dominate 27-3 victory over St George in the Grand Final. As mentioned, one came in 1934 when Frank McMillan captain-coached them to a victory over East Sydney 15-12 in front of a packed out Sydney Sports Ground. After that, it was struggle street again until 1948 brought in another premiership when they defeated Balmain 8-5 in the final.
The 60s brought a great time for the Pies as they were dubbed ‘The Millionares’ as their hugely successful Leagues club had a plethora of pokies money to line the pockets of the Magpies recruitment wallets and the club was able to bring in greats such as Harry Wells, Dick Poole, Kel O’Shea, Ian Moir, Noel Kelly and Arthur Summons. Arthur Summons in particular went on to be an icon for the club and is immortalised in history as apart of the Provan-Summons trophy due to their iconic ‘Gladiators’ moment after the 1963 Grand Final against St George.
The 70s was another iconic era as it saw the introduction of Roy Masters and Tommy Raudonikis and the face slapping era of Wests were born and they were seen as the toughest group of players that ever took the field. However, they couldn’t produce a premiership and only disappointment came for the fans of the Pies for much of the era, but it is still fondly remembered by fans. This lack of onfield success and the sudden drop off in Leagues club profits caused the beginning of the end for the white and black crew and they quickly relocated to Campbeltown to try and stay afloat. But the on-field troubles continued and they suffered back to back wooden spoons in 1998 and 1999, heck of a way to go out.
To survive, like many others, they seeked a merger with another, more successful club. Talks with South Sydney and Canterbury fell through and eventually a negotiation with Balmain was finalised and the Wests Tigers were born. Unfortunately, they were on the side of the merger that lost their identity as Balmain got to keep their colours and mascot and the only element that the Pies got to keep were sporadic home games at Campbelltown and the name of ‘Wests’.
But the Magpies still live on in the Ron Massey Cup and the NSW Cup and still play out of Lidcombe Oval with plenty of fans in the stands for most games, especially the reunion game tey play every year where old players come back to the ground and get treated as heroes. They’ll most likely never see NRL action again, but nobody can deny that Western Suburbs Magpies have a lasting legacy on the competition.
Well, that’s the retrospective complete! All 17 clubs that no longer find themselves at the top level of Rugby League and where they find themselves today. Were/Are you a fan of any of them? Please share your memories in the comments!
If you enjoyed my retrospective series make sure to share it with your mates so the great history of these clubs are not forgotten and comment below what you want to see me dedicate a retrospective to next!