The National Rugby League (NRL) is a professional rugby league competition in Australasia which contains clubs from New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory and New Zealand. Tracing its origins back to the New South Wales Rugby League, which formed in 1908, rugby league competition in Australia had gone through numerous iterations, including the 1990s Super League war, by the time the NRL formed in 1998 as a joint partnership between the Australian Rugby League (ARL) and the News Corporation-controlled Super League. The partnership was dissolved in 2012, with control of the NRL going to the re-constituted ARL, which was re-structured with an independent board of directors and renamed the Australian Rugby League Commission.
The Queensland Reds is the rugby union team for the Australian state of Queensland that competes in the Southern Hemisphere's Super Rugby competition. Prior to 1996, they were a representative team selected from the rugby union club competitions in Queensland. With the introduction of the professional Super 12 competition they moved to a model where players are contracted to the Reds through the Queensland Rugby Union rather than selected on the basis of club form.
The Rugby League Tri-Nations was a rugby league tournament involving the top three teams in the sport: Australia, Great Britain and New Zealand and is the predecessor of today's Rugby League Four Nations.
Lang Park, also known as Brisbane Football Stadium, by the sponsored name Suncorp Stadium, and nicknamed "The Cauldron", is a multi-purpose stadium in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, located in the suburb of Milton. The current facility comprises a three-tiered rectangular sporting stadium with a capacity of 52,500 people. The traditional home of rugby league in Brisbane, the modern stadium is also now used for rugby union and soccer and has a rectangular playing field of 136 by 82 metres. The stadium's major tenants are the Brisbane Broncos, the Dolphins (NRL), Queensland Reds, and the Queensland Maroons.
Ballymore is a rugby union stadium situated in Herston, a suburb of Brisbane, Australia. It is the headquarters of Queensland Rugby Union and was the home ground of the Brisbane City team in the National Rugby Championship, until the league's disbandment in 2019. It is also used as a training facility for the Queensland Reds and Australian Wallabies rugby teams.
Robina Stadium, also known by its sponsored name Cbus Super Stadium, is a rectangular football stadium in the Gold Coast suburb of Robina, Queensland. The main usage is as the home ground to the National Rugby League's Gold Coast Titans; this venue sometimes hosts the A-League team Brisbane Roar FC.
Johnathan Dean Thurston is an Australian former professional rugby league footballer who played in the National Rugby League (NRL). Thurston was an Australian international, Queensland State of Origin and Indigenous All Stars representative, playing at halfback or five-eighth, and was a noted goal-kicker. Thurston has been an assistant coach of the Queensland rugby league team since 2021.
Sport is a significant aspect of the Brisbane lifestyle. Activities range from the occasional international event, annual competitions, competitive leagues and individual recreational pursuits.
The Rugby League World Sevens, usually referred to as the World Sevens and sometimes as the World Cup Sevens, was a pre-season rugby league sevens tournament made up over the years primarily of New South Wales Rugby League (NSWRL), Australian Rugby League (ARL) and mostly recently National Rugby League (NRL) teams, along with teams representing NSW Country and nations including Tonga, France, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Russia, Fiji, the US and England.
Rugby union in Australia has a history of organised competition dating back to the late 1860s. Although traditionally most popular in Australia's rugby football strongholds of New South Wales, Queensland and the ACT, it is played throughout the nation.
The Queensland rugby league team represents the Australian state of Queensland in rugby league football. Nicknamed the "Maroons" after the colour of their jersey, they play three times a year against arch-rivals New South Wales in the State of Origin series. The team is currently coached by Billy Slater and captained by Daly Cherry-Evans, and is administered by the Queensland Rugby League. They play all of their home matches at Brisbane's Lang Park.
Benjamin Hannant, also known by the nickname of "Polar Bear", is a former Australian rugby league footballer and boxer.
This article contains information on rugby league played in 2007. The season commenced with the World Club Challenge and concluded with the New Zealand All Golds Tour in November.
The 1997 Super League season was a breakaway professional rugby league football competition in Australia and the only one to be run by the News Limited-controlled Super League organisation. Eight teams which had broken away from the existing Australian Rugby League, in addition to the newly created Adelaide Rams and Hunter Mariners, competed over eighteen weekly rounds of the regular season. The top five teams then played a series of knock-out finals which culminated in a September grand final played in Brisbane between the Brisbane Broncos and Cronulla.
Sport is an important part of the culture of the Australian state of Queensland. Golf is the most played organised sport and touch football is the most played team sport. Netball is the most popular female sport, while rugby league is the most watched sport. Queensland also has two AFL teams, the Queensland Reds in Super Rugby, and two National Basketball League teams, the Brisbane Bullets, Cairns Taipans and Premier Gymnastics. The largest sporting event held in Queensland annually is the Gold Coast 600 motor race.
The 2011 Super Rugby season was the first season of the new 15-team format for the Super Rugby competition, which involved teams from Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Including its past iterations as Super 12 and Super 14, this was the 16th season for the Southern Hemisphere's premier transnational club competition. The season kicked off in February 2011, with pre-season matches held from mid-January. It finished in early July to allow players a recovery period for the 2011 Rugby World Cup to be held in September and October; in future non-World Cup years, the competition will extend into August.
Nick Frisby is an Australian international rugby union player who plays with the Western Force in Super Rugby AU. His regular playing position is scrum-half.
The 2011 Super Rugby Final, was played between the Queensland Reds from Australia and the Crusaders from New Zealand on 9 July 2011. It was the 16th final in the Super Rugby competition's history and the first under the new 15-team format. The Reds had qualified in first place after the regular competition rounds, while the Crusaders qualified in third. The Reds went straight to the semi-final, where they beat New Zealand team the Blues. The Crusaders hosted a qualifying final in Nelson beating the Sharks, and then travelled to Cape Town and beat the Stormers in the other semi-final. As the Reds had qualified higher, the final was hosted in Brisbane at Suncorp Stadium.
The 2017 Rugby League World Cup final was a rugby league match to determine the winner of the 2017 Rugby League World Cup, played between reigning champions Australia and their rivals England on 2 December 2017 at Brisbane Stadium in Brisbane, immediately after the final of the concurrent women's competition.
The 2017 Brisbane Global Tens was the inaugural Brisbane Global Tens rugby union tournament, with all five of New Zealand's Super Rugby teams, all four of Australia's Super Rugby teams contesting for the title as the core sides, while the Blue Bulls of South Africa, the Panasonic Wild Knights of Japan, Toulon of France, and Manu Samoa competed as invitational sides. It was held at Suncorp Stadium. The draw was released on 16 November 2016. The prize money was AU$1.6 million.
