- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
The Immortals concept is proof that if you stick around long enough, you’ll get respect.
I still have the original copy of Rugby League Week from 34 years ago, with the colour wraparound announcing Bob Fulton, Clive Churchill, Johnny Raper and Reg Gasnier as the first four inductees.
What’s forgotten is that it was a promotion for a tawny port.
Even though I contribute to RLW and the magazine has held a more or less central position in my life since I was a kid, the amount of free publicity the Immortals attracts is a constant source of amazement.
In an era of declining magazine sales across the board, I’m surprised RLW doesn’t do more to leverage the concept’s amazing staying power – like put “The Home Of The Immortals” in its masthead.
What has actually happened is the opposite: everyone else writes about it more because RLW is ‘too close’ to indulge in speculation about who the next inductee might be. The Immortals, to RLW, is like a Porsche that rarely leaves the garage.
The debate over whether Johnathan Thurston should be the next inductee is, to me, a bit like an argument over something that happened on reality TV last night – rather pointless.
Firstly, the criteria for the Immortals states a candidate must be retired a number of years before he can be considered for induction. So Thurston is ineligible until 2023 – end of story.
But on a deeper level, we are all biased towards our current era.
Contrary to popular belief, the Immortals aren’t intended to be the players judged the best since 1908. The concept was limited to the post-war era because it was considered unfair to include any player purely on reputation.
Dally Messenger, like Thurston, is ineligible. You’re in good company, JT.
However, living memory does not stretch back to the war anymore, so the nature of the concept has been altered – ironically – by mortality.
There are other aspects of the original framework that are being sorely tested by the passage of time. For a start, in 1981 there were no Brisbane Broncos, let alone New Zealand Warriors or Melbourne Storm.
The original four inductees all played in the old Sydney premiership. Even the Illawarra Steelers and Canberra Raiders were still a year away. Mal Meninga did not come to the premiership until 1986 but by that stage had been tearing it up for Australia and Queensland for years. You have to question whether being domiciled in Brisbane hurt him.
How is Meninga not an Immortal?
To illustrate how the Immortals concept is geared towards the premiership, let’s look at Brian Bevan. Probably the greatest winger of all time, with 670 first-class tries. All but eight of them, however, were scored in England. Not good for Brian.
How is Bevan not an Immortal?
In 1981, we could not have envisage an era when a large percentage of the players in the premiership are foreigners. The Immortals concept is only for Australians. This, along with the Australian selectors voting for the Clive Churchill Medal, is looking a little anachronistic.
If the current influx of Polynesian players continues, we may one day reach a stage where the minority of first graders are eligible.
Shaun Johnson can never be an Immortal.
Opinions are fun but that’s all they are. Me? Andrew Johns is the best player I’ve seen, then Wally Lewis, then Peter Sterling with Darren Lockyer, Thurston, Meninga and a few others on the next rung.
But the Immortals is a magazine promotion. RLW should absolutely not give it up to the ARL Commission or anyone else (same with Rugby League World, the Golden Boot and the RLIF) because that’s all it is.
I repeat, it’s a magazine promotion coined to sell a few bottles of plonk in 1981. If you choose to take it more seriously than that, that’s a matter for you.