The footage is grainy. The angle of the camera, speed of the play and movement of the ball are all familiar, but foreign. The names? Ringing bells, but fewer every year.
Watch a replay of the 1983 New South Wales Rugby League grand final, and it’s clear the elite game has changed. But the deep respect for the Parramatta players – who won their third-straight top grade grand final that year, as well as another in 1986 – is as strong as ever.
Words about the all-conquering Penrith Panthers have hardly been exchanged this week without referencing those Eels: the last team to go three in a row.
The Panthers are tipped by many to replicate the feat this Sunday. That would bookend rugby league’s era of radical change, as the game’s protagonists describe it.
The fan
From a bench on the single grandstand of Cumberland Oval in the early 1980s, Parramatta tragic Craig Hawkins vividly remembers the peanuts. “Vendors shouting ‘in the shell, or sugar coated,’” he says. “That was a big thing of being at the football, the culinary delights.”
The recent rebuild of Allianz Stadium has brought high-end hospitality empire Merivale into the rugby league arena, along with their cheeseburger spring rolls and sushi. But to Hawkins, that’s just one of many changes from the past 40 years.
“The size of the players for a start,” he says. “There are aspects of the game that are completely different, where there’s so much power and pace in the game.”
Hawkins remembers Eels backrower John Muggleton, all 86kg of him. Joe Ofahengaue played a similar role for Parramatta in this season’s final round, weighing in at 113kg.
But the change that weighs heaviest on Hawkins is the increasing distance between the players and fans. Whereas in the early 1980s as a university student, he would sometimes work alongside Eels’ five-eighth and sometime cellar-man Brett Kenny at the Parramatta Leagues Club. Now, he says, the club’s community have largely been divorced from the players.
“Back then they could be more relaxed and talk to people and they’re not worried about photos being taken of them throwing down beers,” he says. “These days, it’s a completely different beast.”
The player
“Certainly the game’s a lot faster now,” Tony Butterfield says. A premiership player and former captain of Newcastle, the former president of the Rugby League Players Association made his debut in 1984, at the peak of the Eels dynasty.
Butterfield says refereeing has also evolved since then. Stoppages for video reviews and captain’s challenges are great for fans who are “pedantic”, but there was a different approach in the 1980s.
“I think we just recognised the game was not perfect,” he says. “Often the referees would literally say, ‘that was a square-up made for earlier in the game,’ and so the referees were able to apply a little bit of balance if they felt they’d got something wrong. These days everything’s under the microscope.”
Butterfield says players today are given more support during their careers and a better chance at succeeding after retirement. “In our day it was just, you play, you get paid once every six months, and whatever you do off the field was a matter for you,” he says.
“Players now are in better shape and they’re exposed to a lot of high performance information, be it nutritionally, psychologically, physiologically.”
The numbers man
“Team tackle counts in those days would have been 200,” says David Middleton, the longtime numbers man for Channel Nine’s rugby league coverage. “40 tackles was just about the limit for players.”
In the arm-wrestle between the Sharks and Roosters in the first week of this year’s finals, both teams made more than 350 tackles. Five players had more than 40 tackles, including Nat Butcher who made 51.
Middleton was drawn to the details in rugby league as a boy, and especially the international game. His big break came when he collated the first official list of Kangaroos representatives in a book released in his last year of high school, in 1982. “That’s one thing I think it’s a real shame that we’ve lost, the Kangaroo tours,” he says.
The last full tour – where an Australian side would spend weeks playing against various European sides – was in 1994. As the demands on players have grown, these ventures have been sacrificed. “The international side was one of the great parts of the game,” Middleton says.
The administrator
“There were moments when poor behaviour was highlighted and it was a big issue for the game,” former NRL chief executive David Gallop says. “But programmes around alcohol, gambling, sexual ethics, drugs, those were those are important pillars in the game’s regeneration.”
There have still been scandals in the years since – notably concerning Ben Barba and Matt Lodge – but the league now has little patience for even allegations of crime. Rugby league commissioner Megan Davis told a Women in League breakfast in July the NRL’s no-fault stand-down policy for serious allegations introduced in 2019 has “enabled the game to really flourish”.
After the 1990s saw clubs teetering on the brink of survival, Gallop made an even competition a priority for the code, implemented mostly through a salary cap. “That came with some big moments around enforcement of the salary cap,” he says, citing the heavy penalties for the Melbourne Storm.
Gallop also credits the establishment of a development foundation to invest in grassroots during this period, the central coordination of community outreach under the NRL and the establishment of education and welfare programs as key reforms that have helped the game grow.
“Ultimately they led to greater commercialisation and a situation now where clubs are not financially in peril because of the money that the game generates,” he says.
The pioneer
“I grew up with both my brothers playing first grade, and they were heroes walking around the joint,” Tarsha Gale says. “Whereas I was left selling meat trays in pubs.” Gale is a Jillaroo from Australia’s first official women’s Test in 1995 and now a Fox Sports commentator.
“You’d have that whole conversation … they’d go, ‘what, tackle?’ and I’d go, ‘yes mate, please buy a raffle ticket.’”
The NRLW’s introduction in 2018 has opened up opportunities for women, and Gale describes this year’s product as “phenomenal”. The decider between the Knights and Titans will be held in the afternoon on Sunday before the NRL grand final. But Gale believes the league’s short season and semi-professional model are some of “those little machinations” that remain impediments for women and girls.
But while slow, Gale says the progress is evident. “You’ve got little boys now, looking at [Broncos captain] Ali Brigginshaw and going ‘I want to be just like you.’ They now have female rugby league heroes.”
Follow the buildup and every minute of the NRLW and NRL grand finals on Sunday with Guardian Australia’s live blogs from 3.15pm AEDT
