While you are waiting for the grand final and deciding whether you are going to have souvlaki or party pies on Sunday, how about a quick rugby league history trivia quiz to break things up?
During which years did the ‘Pale Whale’ Merv Hicks captain-coach the North Sydney Bears and what was his success rate?
How many games did teenage sensation Geoff Starling play for Balmain before having to retire following diagnosis of a serious illness?
When did the Rochdale Hornets win the Challenge Cup?
What ground hosted a match between Victoria and England in 1924?
The source for these questions was the Rugby League Project site an absolute gold mine of free data for media, bloggers, clubs and most importantly rugby league nerds.
The Rugby League Project (RLP) was the brainchild of Cowboys fan Shawn Dollin, back in 2005, initially indulging his passion for the North Queensland team. Likeminded fellows came along like ants to spilt sugar to volunteer and suddenly the Project has become a whole lot broader.
Two people who have joined Shawn in becoming site partners are Bill Bates who provides the English data side of things, and self confessed rugby league nerd Andrew Ferguson.
Andrew is very clear on the fact that the project is nowhere near completion. Despite that daunting prospect they have lofty ambitions.
‘Essentially we would like to be a one stop destination for all historical rugby league information, be it results, players, coaches, clubs, referees or venues.
‘At the moment we have the NSWRL/NRL and English Northern Union (which became the RFL and Superleague) and also the cup competitions like the Amco Cup in Australia and the Challenge Cup in the UK. We also record representative games up to and including international level.
‘We have never put parameters on the site. We are currently working on all the full match details for the NRL back to 1908 as well as the English competitions and the Challenge Cup. We even want to chase the almost impossible task of all country NSW, Brisbane and Queensland rugby league games, New Zealand first grade competitions and even reserve grade in NSWRL.’ Ferguson enthused.
So how does someone get so mesmerised by a game that they spend their life researching and recording its history for no financial reward?
‘I was 8 years old and turned on the TV one Saturday afternoon. Balmain were playing Cronulla and I have been hooked ever since. The same year I received David Middleton’s 1989-90 Annual. After that all I ever wanted to be was a rugby league historian.’
While rugby league statistics have become very cool these days with marketing and branding such as the ‘Fox Sports Lab’, Ferguson and friends aren’t looking to monetise the site and he is insistent that RLP ‘has always been not for profit and will always stay that way.’
Given Andrew spends his life digging out tiny gems of rugby league history I asked him for his favourite story.
‘This story also happens to be my first published article (Andrew is a freelance sportswriter when he’s not obsessing about RLP) and I was tipped off by a co-worker whose great grandfather Ted Hooper was the referee in the first game of rugby league in Australia. So I spoke to the family and did an epic amount of research and digging around, finding extra information that the family didn’t know even know about.’
‘Anyway to cut a long story short Ted came out of retirement to officiate one last game, an exhibition at half time of a match between NSW and Queensland in 1925. The game between the Brisbane and Ipswich referees went for 15 minutes. After the game Hooper waved and acknowledged the crowd who were all applauding, walked in to have a shower and collapsed. His death notice tasted that he died of shock.’
The guiding motto for RLP is ‘Dream big and then you never lose the motivation to keep working especially when you are as obsessed about the game and the history as we are.’
It has taken me most of my years to realise that passions should be front of mind when deciding what to do with your life. The rest follows.
These guys have passion in spades and they really are creating rugby league history.
Quiz answers courtesy of RLP:
-Merv Hicks captain-coached the North Sydney Bears during the 1971 and 72 seasons. His success rate was 27 per cent (Wins were scarce for the Bears in that era).
-Geoff Starling played 22 games for Balmain before retiring. He also played in 11 Test matches for Australia during that time. Starling was later diagnosed as having Addison’s Disease.
-The Rochdale Hornets won the Challenge Cup in 1922. The Hornets recently won promotion to the Kingstone Press Championship for 2017.
-England played Victoria at the Fitzroy ground as part of a Lions tour in 1924, The tourists won 45-13.
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