The 1999 NRL season was the 92nd season of professional
rugby league football in Australia, and the second to be run by the
National Rugby League. With the exclusion of the
Adelaide Rams
The Adelaide Rams were an Australian professional rugby league football club based in Adelaide, South Australia. The team was formed in 1995 for the planned rebel Super League competition. The Rams lasted two seasons, the first in the Super Le ...
and
Gold Coast Chargers
The Gold Coast Chargers were a professional rugby league club which played in the New South Wales Rugby League premiership from 1988 to 1994, the Australian Rugby League premiership from 1995 to 1997, and the National Rugby League premiership ...
, and the joint venture of the
St. George Dragons
The St. George Dragons is an Australian rugby league football club from St George District in Sydney, New South Wales that played in the top level New South Wales competition and Australian Rugby League competitions from the 1921 until th ...
and
Illawarra Steelers
The Illawarra Steelers are an Australian rugby league football club based in the city of Wollongong, New South Wales. The club competed in Australia's top-level rugby league competition from 1982 until 1998. On the 13th of December 1980, th ...
, seventeen teams competed for the NRL Premiership during the 1999 season, which culminated in the first
grand final
Primarily in Australian sports, a grand final (sometimes colloquially abbreviated to "grannie") is a game that decides a sports league's premiership (or championship) winning team, i.e. the conclusive game of a finals (or play-off) series. S ...
to be played at
Stadium Australia. The
St. George Illawarra Dragons
The St. George Illawarra Dragons is an Australian professional rugby league football club, representing both the Illawarra and St George regions of New South Wales. The club has competed in the National Rugby League since 1999 after a joint-ve ...
, the first joint-venture club to appear in the grand final, played against the
Melbourne Storm, who won the premiership in only their second season.
Season summary
The 1999 National Rugby League season was historic for many reasons. The
St. George Illawarra Dragons
The St. George Illawarra Dragons is an Australian professional rugby league football club, representing both the Illawarra and St George regions of New South Wales. The club has competed in the National Rugby League since 1999 after a joint-ve ...
played their inaugural game after forming the League's first joint venture, losing 10-20 to the
Parramatta Eels
The Parramatta Eels are an Australian professional rugby league football club based in the Sydney suburb of Parramatta that competes in the National Rugby League.
The Parramatta District Rugby League Football Club was formed in 1947, and their ...
. That game was the second of a double header, which was the first event to be held at Sydney's
Stadium Australia, the central venue for the
Olympic Games the following year. That game attracted a rugby league world record of 104,583 spectators.
During the season, the members of the
Balmain Tigers
The Balmain Tigers (also known as the Sydney Tigers from 1995–96) are a rugby league club based in the inner-western Sydney suburb of Balmain. They were a founding member of the New South Wales Rugby League and one of the most successful in t ...
and
Western Suburbs Magpies voted to form another joint venture, to be named the
Wests Tigers
The Wests Tigers are an Australian professional rugby league football team, based in the Inner West and South West Sydney. They have competed in the National Rugby League since being formed at the end of the 1999 NRL season as a joint-venture ...
. After the conclusion of the season, the
South Sydney Rabbitohs and
North Sydney Bears were excluded from the premiership. The Bears would later form the game's third joint venture with the
Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles, whilst South Sydney would fight a two-year legal battle for reinclusion.
In August the NRL's CEO
Neil Whittaker
Neil Whittaker (born 10 September 1956) is an Australian former professional rugby league footballer who played in the 1970s and 1980s for Balmain in the NSWRL competition. Whittaker was also the chief executive officer of the National Rugby L ...
announced that he would resign at the end of the season.
The defending premiers, Brisbane endured their worst ever start to a season, with just one win and a draw from their first ten games, however they would miraculously recover and record 11 wins in a row before hitting a few hurdles along the way, including a draw against Manly in round 24 and a loss against then-bogey team
Parramatta at home in round 25. Their champion
halfback and captain
Allan Langer
Allan Jeffrey "Alfie" Langer AM (born 30 July 1966) is an Australian former multi-award-winning rugby league footballer who played in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s and worked as an assistant coach for the Australian national team, the Queensland ...
retired mid-season as a result. The
Newcastle Knights also lost an iconic player when 1997 premiership captain
Paul Harragon
Paul William Harragon OAM (born 12 October 1968) nicknamed Chief or Chief Harragon is an Australian rugby league football identity. A former Australian international and New South Wales State of Origin representative forward, he played rugby ...
retired mid-season due to a chronic knee injury. The
Melbourne Storm's premiership victory saw their captain
Glenn Lazarus become the only player to ever win grand finals for three clubs.
Cliff Lyons
Cliff Lyons (born 19 October 1961) is an indigenous Australian former international rugby league footballer who played in the 1980s and 1990s. A Clive Churchill Medalllist and two-time Dally M Medallist, he made 309 first-grade appearances wi ...
, making a comeback from retirement for the
Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles, was the oldest player in the NRL in 1999.
Teams
The exclusion of the
Adelaide Rams
The Adelaide Rams were an Australian professional rugby league football club based in Adelaide, South Australia. The team was formed in 1995 for the planned rebel Super League competition. The Rams lasted two seasons, the first in the Super Le ...
and
Gold Coast Chargers
The Gold Coast Chargers were a professional rugby league club which played in the New South Wales Rugby League premiership from 1988 to 1994, the Australian Rugby League premiership from 1995 to 1997, and the National Rugby League premiership ...
, and the joint venture of the
St. George Dragons
The St. George Dragons is an Australian rugby league football club from St George District in Sydney, New South Wales that played in the top level New South Wales competition and Australian Rugby League competitions from the 1921 until th ...
and
Illawarra Steelers
The Illawarra Steelers are an Australian rugby league football club based in the city of Wollongong, New South Wales. The club competed in Australia's top-level rugby league competition from 1982 until 1998. On the 13th of December 1980, th ...
, saw a reduction in the League's teams from twenty to seventeen: the largest reduction in the number of teams in premiership history and the first reduction since the exclusion of Sydney's
Newtown Jets
The Newtown Jets are an Australian rugby league football club based in Newtown, a suburb of Sydney's inner west. They currently compete in the NSW Cup competition, having left the top grade after the 1983 NSWRFL season. The Jets' home ground ...
at the end of the
1983 season.
Advertising
In a move that polarised some fans, the NRL in its 1999 promotional campaign focused on the game's grass roots supporters who perhaps had been overlooked and pained in the trauma of the
Super League war
The Super League war was a commercial competition between the Australian Rugby League (ARL) and the Australian Super League to establish pre-eminence in professional rugby league competition in Australia and New Zealand in the mid-1990s.
Super ...
. Sydney advertising agency VCD, in the third year of their four-year tenure with the NRL, produced an advertisement featuring
Thomas Keneally
Thomas Michael Keneally, AO (born 7 October 1935) is an Australian novelist, playwright, essayist, and actor. He is best known for his non-fiction novel '' Schindler's Ark'', the story of Oskar Schindler's rescue of Jews during the Holocaust, ...
reading his poem, "Ode to Rugby League", which had been commissioned by the NRL. It speaks of the innocent excitement that begins each season. The ad was used at season launch and there was minimal media budget to support it throughout the year. Keneally is a longtime supporter of the
Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles.
Ladder
Finals series
Chart
Grand Final
The 1999
NRL Grand Final was the conclusive and premiership-deciding game of the 1999 NRL season. It was contested by the competition's two newest clubs: the
Melbourne Storm, competing in only its second year (having finished the regular season in 3rd place); and the
St. George Illawarra Dragons
The St. George Illawarra Dragons is an Australian professional rugby league football club, representing both the Illawarra and St George regions of New South Wales. The club has competed in the National Rugby League since 1999 after a joint-ve ...
, in their first year as a joint-venture club (having finished the regular season in 6th place), after both sides eliminated the rest of the top eight during the finals.
A new rugby league world record crowd of 107,999 was at
Stadium Australia for the game. The attendance, which saw 67,142 more people attend than had done so for the
1998 NRL Grand Final at the
Sydney Football Stadium
The Sydney Football Stadium, commercially known as Allianz Stadium and previously Aussie Stadium, was a football stadium in Moore Park, Sydney, Australia. Built in 1988 next to the Sydney Cricket Ground, the stadium was Sydney's premier recta ...
, broke the record attendance for a Grand Final, eclipsing the previous record of 78,065 set in
1965
Events January–February
* January 14 – The Prime Minister of Northern Ireland and the Taoiseach of the Republic of Ireland meet for the first time in 43 years.
* January 20
** Lyndon B. Johnson is sworn in for a full term as ...
when
St. George defeated
South Sydney 12-8 at the
Sydney Cricket Ground. It was the last time that the Clive Churchill Medal was presented in a case before it was changed the following season where it is presented separately with a ribbon being worn around the neck.
Pre-match entertainment featured
Hugh Jackman
Hugh Michael Jackman (born 12 October 1968) is an Australian actor. Beginning in theatre and television, he landed his breakthrough role as James "Logan" Howlett / Wolverine in the 20th Century Fox ''X-Men'' film series (2000–2017), a role ...
's rendition of the
Australian national anthem
"Advance Australia Fair" is the national anthem of Australia. Written by Scottish-born composer Peter Dodds McCormick, the song was first performed in 1878, sung in Australia as a patriotic song. It first replaced "God Save the Queen" as the ...
.
Player statistics
The following statistics are as of the conclusion of Round 24.
Top 5 point scorers
Top 5 try scorers
Top 5 goal scorers
1999 Transfers
Players
Coaches
References
External links
Rugby League Tables - Notes''RL1908''
''Thomas Kenneally poem''
{{1999 in rugby league