A Review of A Decade of Super League DVD
The History of Rugby League's Ten Years of Professionalism
Sep 19, 2009
Despite the limitations of putting the best possible spin on the Super League revolution, this hour long documentary gives a good insight into the context and main reasons behind the introduction of the summer competition. Packed full of game highlights and interviews with the main movers and shakers, it certainly is full value. A handy introduction for newbies and great nolstagia for longer term fans.
Professionalism and Summer Rugby League
Its a common misconception that rugby league has been a professional sport since the inception of the Northern Union in 1895. In reality the early years saw only a committment to 'broken time payments', money for time missed off work. Even when the regulations were loosened, the economic realities of the sport meant most players were semi-professional, working part time in mostly manual working class jobs.
Wigan were the first club to fund a truly full time, professional team and consequently dominated the sport, winning a record eight Challenge Cup Finals in a row betwen 1987 and 1995. The irony is that almost after 100 years after the split with the Rugby Football Union, the amateur version of rugby went professional, or 'open' to use the technical phrase. In reality rugby league although 'open', only went fully professional a year later with the birth of Super League.
Sky Television and Maurice Lindsay
Rugby league was a winter sport for most of it's history. The stadiums had endured years of neglect and were not up to scratch, in terms of safety and comfort. The sport was in trouble, with many clubs on the edge. In Australia, where Rugby League was and is much stronger, a war had broken out over the sport.
The Super League there had been created as a rival to the competition run by the Australian Rugby League, with millions being thrown around. This impacted in this country. Iestyn Harris in his autiobiography, Iestyn Harris: There and Back - My Journey from League to Union and Back Again Mainstream Publishing 2005, recalls how as a young player he was suddenly being offered 100's of thousands of pounds to play here or in Australia.
The driving force behind these events was Rupert Murdoch, the Australian press magnate, and Maurice Lindsay, a controversial figure in the hierarchy of the game. Sky Sports was the main focus of Murdoch's Sky Television in the UK. Although a small sport rugby league still delivers good, consistent numbers with a loyal fan base, but it was the conflict in Australia that strategically made rugby league in the UK important. In exchange for exclusive rights, the promise to expand the competition into a 'European' league and of course switching to summer, Sky Sports pumped tens of millions of pounds into the sport.
Pomp and Circumstance
Despite the cynicism involved in the decision to get on board with Sky Sports, the clubs and governing bodies embraced the opportunity with enthusiasm. None so more then the Bradford Bulls, but the liveliness and optimism of the new competition blasts through in this DVD. The cheerleaders, the video referees, the mascots and eventually the creation of a play off system and Grand Final (the latter very much copied from Australia) make the game sparkle like never before.
A Sky Sports Production
Rugby league is very much a Sky Sports mainstay and its arguable the game suffers from lack of exposure on terrestrial television. This documentary does not explore some of the criticisms or downsides of this situation, and as it is created by the self same company that's hardly surprising. However for a brief run down of the most important event in modern rugby league history it carries the watcher along. Taken with a pinch of salt its well worth the purchase.
Source:
A Decade of Super League, Running Time: 60 mins, Green Umbrella Sport and Leisure, 2006
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