| Team information | |
|---|---|
| Nickname | Black Swans |
| Governing body | Western Australian Rugby League |
| Home stadium | NIB Stadium |
The Western Australia rugby league team has represented the Australian state of Western Australia in rugby league football. Also known as the Black Swans
Representative rugby league football in Western Australia has history going back to the early days of the WARL. The first interstate match played by Western Australians was against the Northern Territory in 1956, with WA winning the series 2-1.
In 1969 Darwin City invited the WARL to Darwin to play a match in celebration of Darwin's 100th founding anniversary in which WA won 23-19. In 1976 WA was invited to participate in the nationwide Amco Cup, where they defeated the Northern Territory 23-18. [1]
In 1975 Western Australia participate in the 1975 Pacific Cup and 1977 Pacific Cup.
NT toured again in 1983 & 1985 and since 1994 Western Australia has competed annually in the Affiliated States Championship, winning the most titles (16) of any state and 9 straight consecutive titles from 2010-2018. [2]
International football also has a history in WA, with Great Britain Lions touring Perth in 1950, 1343, 1957, 1962, 1975 and France touring in 1951, 1964. [3]
The NRL, formed in 1998, is the pre-eminent rugby league club competition in Australia and New Zealand. It contains some clubs from the original Sydney club rugby league competition, which had been running continuously since 1908. A single team from New Zealand also plays in the league. The NRL formed in the aftermath of the 1990s' Super League war as a joint partnership between the Australian Rugby League (ARL) and media giant News Corporation–controlled Super League, after both organisations ran premierships parallel to each other in 1997. This partnership was dissolved in February 2012, with control of the NRL going solely to the re-constituted ARL, which was re-structured with an independent board of directors and renamed as the Australian Rugby League Commission.
The Western Reds were a rugby league football club based in Perth, Western Australia. Founded in 1992 as the Western Reds, they entered into the Australian Rugby League competition in 1995 before defecting to the rival Super League competition in 1997, where they rebranded themselves as the Perth Reds. However, by the end of the year the Reds had become a casualty of the Super League War peace deal and were shut down. The name Reds was named after the native Red Kangaroos. The Reds entered a state of limbo for the next decade but were revived as a lower-level club in 2006 by the WARL and ARL, under the name WA Reds.
NRL Northern Territory is the organisation responsible for administering the game of rugby league in the Northern Territory. It controls the Darwin Rugby League, Darwin Junior Rugby League and Central Australian Rugby Football League.
NRL Western Australia is responsible for administering the game of rugby league football in the state of Western Australia.
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 2009, it was the most watched sport on Australian television eclipsing the AFL nationally with an aggregate audience of 128.5 million viewers. The elite club competition is the National Rugby League (NRL), which features ten teams from New South Wales, three teams from Queensland, and one team each from Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory and New Zealand.
Rugby league in New Zealand dates to the beginning of the sport in England.
Perth Oval, currently branded HBF Park and called Perth Rectangular Stadium for international football matches, is a sports stadium in Perth, the capital of the Australian state of Western Australia. Located close to Perth's central business district, the stadium currently has a maximum capacity of 20,500 people for sporting events and 25,000 people for concerts, with the ground's record attendance of 32,000 people set during an Ed Sheeran concert in 2015. The land on which the stadium was built was made a public reserve in 1904, with the main ground developed several years later.
Marrara Oval, currently branded TIO Stadium under a naming rights agreement, is a sports ground in Darwin, the capital of Australia's Northern Territory. The ground primarily hosts Australian rules football, cricket, and rugby league.
Rugby union is a football code within Australia with a history of organised competition dating back to 1864. Although traditionally most popular in Australia's rugby football strongholds of New South Wales, Queensland and the ACT, it is played throughout the nation.
Many sports are played in the Northern Territory of Australia.
Rugby league, in New South Wales, is the most popular participation and spectator sport. It currently has the highest attendance and television audiences of the various codes of football in the state, far outstripping any other competitors. The state has over 400,000 active participants in the sport with a further 1 million playing the sport in schools, over 500 active clubs across the state, and 10 clubs in the national professional competition, named the 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.
The Affiliated States Championship is an annual rugby league competition run by the Australian Rugby League involving the four affiliated states plus the Australian Police and Australian Defence Force.
Rugby league in Western Australia is played at amateur level, but attracts an audience particularly for the State of Origin series.
Rugby league in the Northern Territory is administered by the Northern Territory Rugby League and is played in Darwin at Richardson Park and in Alice Springs at Anzac Oval.
The Goldfields Titans was a semi professional rugby league club based in Kalgoorlie-Boulder, Western Australia, Australia. They compete in the Western Australia Rugby League's Harvey Norman Cup first grade competition and home games are played at the Goldfields Oasis Playing Fields.
The 1975 Pacific Cup was the first edition of the Pacific Cup, a rugby league tournament held between Pacific teams. The tournament was hosted by Papua New Guinea and eventually won by the New Zealand Māori side, who defeated the hosts 38-13 in the final.
The National Rugby League is the top level rugby league competition in Australia and New Zealand. It was formed in 1998 after the merger of the Australian Super League and the Australian Rugby League. Inaugurally containing 20 teams, rationalisation cut this number down to 14 by 2000, before the competition expanded back to 16 by 2007. A 17th club, named The Dolphins, is set to join in 2023.
The West Coast Pirates Rugby League Football Club, officially referred to as The Cash Converters West Coast Pirates for sponsorship reasons, are a rugby league football club based in Perth, Western Australia. The club was founded by the Western Australian Rugby League as a bid for Perth to rejoin an expanded National Rugby League in 2026. If successful, the Pirates would play out of HBF Park, with the support of the Western Australian Government through a $96 million upgrade to the venue.
Women's rugby league is a popular women's sports in Australia. The sport has a high level of participation in the country both recreational and professional. Australian Rugby League Commission (ARLC) is the national governing body of the sport in Australia, organising the Australian Women's Rugby League, the Australian women's national team, and the nine state governing bodies of the game, among other duties. Women's participation of modern rugby league has been recorded since the early 1920s. It has since become one of Australia's most popular women's team sports.
