The New South Wales Rugby League Ltd (NSWRL) is an Australian rugby league football competition operator in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory and is a member of the Australian Rugby League Commission. It was registered on 21 December 1983 and succeeded the New South Wales Rugby Football League which had been formed in Sydney on 8 August 1907. The NSWRFL and then NSWRL operated Sydney's, then New South Wales' and eventually Australia's premier rugby league club competition from 1908 to 1994. The organisation administers the New South Wales rugby league team.
The Western Suburbs Magpies is an Australian rugby league football club based in the western suburbs of Sydney, New South Wales. Formed in 1908, Wests, as the club is commonly referred to, was one of the nine foundation clubs of the first New South Wales Rugby League competition in Australia. The club, as a sole entity, departed the top-flight competition in 1999 after forming a 50–50 joint venture with Balmain Tigers to form the Wests Tigers. The club currently fields sides in the NSW State Cup, Ron Massey Cup (Opens), S.G. Ball Cup and Harold Matthews Cup competitions.
Rugby league in Australia has been one of Australia's most popular sports since it started being played there in 1908. It is the dominant winter football code in the states of New South Wales and Queensland. In 2022, it was the most watched sport on Australian television with an aggregate audience of 137.3 million viewers. The premier club competition is the National Rugby League (NRL), which features ten teams from New South Wales, four teams from Queensland, and one team each from Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory and New Zealand. The premier representative competition is the annual Rugby league State of Origin featuring two sides, the New South Wales Blues and the Queensland Maroons is often referred to as "Australian sport's greatest rivalry", it is one of Australia's premier sporting events, attracting huge interest and television audiences.
The Winfield State League was a rugby league football competition in Queensland, Australia. It was administered by the Queensland Rugby League. The competition was the QRL's parallel to the NSWRL's Amco Cup knockout and ran alongside the Brisbane Rugby League club competition. The competition was formed in 1982 and ran until 1995, after which it was superseded by the Queensland Cup.
The NSW Cup, currently known as the Knock-On Effect NSW Cup for sponsorship reasons, is a rugby league competition for clubs in New South Wales. The competition has a history dating back to the NSWRFL's origins in 1908, starting off as a reserve grade competition, and is now the premier open age competition in the state. The New South Wales Cup, along with the Queensland Cup, acts as a feeder competition to the National Rugby League premiership. The competition is the oldest continuous rugby league competition in the Australia.
Universal football was the name given to a proposed hybrid sport of Australian rules football and rugby league, proposed at different times between 1908 and 1933 as a potential national football code to be played throughout Australia and New Zealand. The game was trialled, but it was never otherwise played in any regular competition.
The 1909 New South Wales Rugby Football League premiership was the second season of Sydney's top-level rugby league football competition, Australia's first. Eight teams contested during the season for the premiership and the Royal Agricultural Society Challenge Shield; seven teams from Sydney and one team from Newcastle, New South Wales.
The Country Rugby League of New South Wales (CRL), formed in 1934 and disbanded in 2019, was the governing body for the sport of rugby league football in areas of New South Wales outside the Sydney metropolitan area until it merged with NSW Rugby League in 2019. The CRL was superseded by 6 NSWRL Country Divisions represented by 4 members of the nine-person NSWRL board. Despite its name, the CRL also governed rugby league in the Australian Capital Territory. Apart from selecting a Country Origin side to play in the annual City vs Country Origin game, the CRL administered many senior and junior competitions across the state.
The Newcastle Rugby League is a local rugby league football competition in Newcastle, Australia. It is one of the oldest rugby league competitions in Australia, founded in 1910. A Newcastle representative team was also assembled from players in the League during most of the 20th century. The first grade competition also comprises the NSWRL Presidents Cup Northern Conference.
The Sydney Roosters Juniors are officially known as the Eastern Suburbs District Junior Rugby League. It is an affiliation of junior clubs in the Eastern Suburbs area, covering the Woollahra and Waverley local government areas (LGAs), the northern parts of the Randwick LGA and the City of Sydney LGA, in Sydney, Australia.
The Jersey Flegg Cup is a junior rugby league competition played in New South Wales, Australia, contested among teams made up of players aged 21 or under. The competition is administered by the New South Wales Rugby League (NSWRL), and is named for Eastern Suburbs foundation player and prominent administrator of the game, Harry "Jersey" Flegg.
The S. G. Ball Cup is a junior rugby league football competition played predominantly in New South Wales, between teams made up of male players aged under 19. Teams from Canberra and Melbourne, and Auckland also participate. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic in New South Wales a team from Perth also participated. The competition is administered by the New South Wales Rugby League. The competition includes both junior representative teams of NRL and NSW Cup clubs that do not field a team in the NRL competition.
The Australian rugby league premiers are the winners of the top grade competition in Australian rugby league, which is currently the National Rugby League. From 1908 until 1995, when the ARL Premiership was formed, there were two premiers, one each from Sydney and Brisbane. This occurred again in 1997 during the Super League war.
In Queensland, Rugby league was introduced in 1908 and is the most watched winter sport in the state and the second most participated football code after soccer. Within its first decade it surpassed rugby union there to become the most popular football code as players switched to play professionally in the Queensland Rugby League (QRL). In the 1920s, Queenslanders began leaving to play professionally in the New South Wales Rugby League which became a more popular competition. However Queensland maintained a strong rugby league culture, with the state continuing to perform well in interstate rugby league. The later advent of the State of Origin series ensured that players would return to represent their state. Regarded as “Australian sport's greatest rivalry”, the term "Origin fever" is used by the media to describe the passion of the Queenslanders public for the competition and the chant "Queenslander!", attributed to Billy Moore in 1995, has become the state's battle cry. The Queensland Rugby League is the governing body and has 58,912 registered tackle players. Rugby league authorities often count an additional 70,000 registered touch football players as participants, though that sport is only loosely affiliated and is governed by Touch Football Queensland.
Rugby league in New South Wales is the most popular spectator sport in the state, with the attendance and television audiences exceeding that of the various other codes of football. There are over 400,000 active rugby league participants, with a further 1 million playing the sport in schools, placing the sport second only to soccer for the most played sport in the state. There are more than 500 active clubs, ten of which are professional teams competing in the National Rugby League (NRL).
Francis Edwin Johnson OAM (1922–1993) was an Australian rugby league footballer, coach and administrator who devoted much of his life to the development of the game in Australia. He was a state and national representative player of the 1940s, and was heavily involved in coaching development in the 1960s and 1970s.
Rugby League is one of the most popular codes of football in the Australian Capital Territory. The Canberra Raiders of the National Rugby League became the Territory's first professional sports team when they were established in 1982. For decades before that rugby league clubs in the area had been competing and providing footballers for representative sides that played against domestic and foreign teams.
The Australian Rugby League Commission Limited (ARL), formerly the Australian Rugby Football League Limited known as the Australian Rugby League is an Australian rugby league football competition operator. It was founded in 1986 as the Australian Rugby Football League Limited and succeeded the Australian Rugby Football League Board of Control which had been formed in 1924. Since its inception, the ARL has administered the Australian national team and represented Australia in international rugby league matters. Prior to 1998, the code in Australia had been principally administered by individual state leagues on a domestic basis, and the ARL on a national and international basis.
The South Sydney District Junior Rugby Football League is an affiliation of junior clubs in the South Sydney area.
