South Queensland Crushers

Infobox rugby league club
clubname = South Queensland


fullname = South Queensland Crushers Rugby League Football Club
nickname = The Crushers
colours = Aztec Gold, Navy Blue & Red
founded = 1992 (first season 1995)
exited = 1997
ground = Suncorp Stadium
capacity = 40,500
league = Australian Rugby League
premierships = 0
runnerups = 0
minorpremierships = 0
spoons = 2
spoonyears = 1996, 1997
homejersey = South Queensland Crushers home jersey 1995.svgThe South Queensland Crushers were an Australian rugby league football club based in Brisbane, Queensland. In 1992 it was decided that the team would be admitted into the New South Wales Rugby League competition, along with three other teams, as part of the League's expansion plans for professional rugby league in Australia. The competition was re-branded the Australia Rugby League competition in 1995, which was the Crushers' first season.

The Crushers, whose whole existence was against the backdrop of the Super League war, were an unsuccessful club. They had to compete for support with the other Brisbane-based club, the Brisbane Broncos, who were already well-established. The Crushers only competed in the three seasons of the Australian Rugby League's premiership, winning the wooden spoon twice for being last in the competition. Despite the wealth of star players the Crushers managed to attract, they were financially unsustainable and competitively unsuccessful, which ultimately led to their demise at the end of 1997.

History

Formation

The New South Wales Rugby League competition (NSWRL) had begun in 1908 as a rugby league competition in the Sydney region of Australia. For the next eighty years, the league would only feature clubs in the New South Wales region. But in 1988, the NSWRL admitted two Queensland based teams, one from Brisbane and the other from Gold Coast. The Brisbane club was the first NSWRL club to be privately owned and by 1992 had won a premiership with a dominant team. The NSWRL, planned to introduce a second Brisbane based team, hoping to hold back or reproduce the success of the Brisbane Broncos.cite book | author=Whiticker, Alan & Collis, Ian | title= The History of Rugby League Clubs
publisher=New Holland Publishers (Australia) Pty Ltd | year=2004| id=ISBN 1-74110-075-5]

On the 30 November 1992, the NSWRL formally admitted a new Brisbane-based team into the competition, along with three others, from Townsville, Perth and New Zealand. The NSWRL hastily established the Brisbane-based team, which was to be known as the "South Queensland Crushers", who would enter the 1995 NSWRL competition, which had been renamed the Australian Rugby League competition (ARL).

In September 1993, the Crushers chose Bill Gardner as the coach for the team, but after a poor off-season, he was replaced by former Australian international Bob Lindner. Darryl van der Velde, an experienced rugby league coach from England, was the club's inaugural chief executive. The club had chosen Lang Park as their home ground which had been abandoned by the Brisbane Broncos in favour of QE II Stadium in 1992.

The Crushers were able to sign Queensland representative players Trevor Gillmeister, Mark Hohn and Dale Shearer, as well as three rugby union players including Garrick Morgan who had represented Australia in the fifteen-man code. The Crushers had attempted to lure former Australian international captain Mal Meninga from retirement for one more season, but failed. By the beginning of the 1995 competition, the Crushers had also signed North Sydney forward Mario Fenech, who the club named as their captain. The club's major sponsor was XXXX with Qantas announced as the sleeve sponsor.

The first season

The Crushers lost their first game along with next three before winning their first match 16-12 against North Sydney in Round five. An injury to Dale Shearer and the failure of Garrick Morgan to adapt to rugby league saw the Crushers fail to utilise much of it’s attacking potential. Captain Fenech was dropped to the interchange bench and lost the captaincy which was passed on to Gillmeister. The season’s end was dampened after coach Lindner and Fenech feuded, resulting in Fenech being released from the final year of his contract.

In the 1995 season, the club had only won six and drew another in the twenty-two games played. In 1995, News Limited, a mass media company, began deliberating a rival rugby league competition, the Super League, and with the rival Broncos a key part of the plans for Super League, the Crushers remained loyal to the ARL competition. The Crushers believed that they would survive and be able to compete on their own. The ARL supported this despite the disappointing results of their first season because of the high home ground crowds, with supporters averaging over 21,000 a season.

Demise

With the unification of the Australian Rugby League and Super League competitions following the 1997 season, the new National Rugby League competition was formed. This meant that three teams of the twenty-two teams participating in 1997 would be axed as part of the rationalisation process aimed at reducing teams to an optimal number. With the introduction of the Melbourne Storm and the fact that the agreement between the Australian Rugby League and Super League was to have a fourteen-team competition in 2000, the future for the Crushers was inevitably demise.

In late 1997, the club’s only option of survival was to merge, with the most likely contender the Gold Coast Chargers, who like the Crushers, were struggling to be able compete in the competition. However, the National Rugby League approved the Gold Coast team for the 1998 season, and they went alone into the re-unified competition. The South Queensland Crushers club was wound up in December 1997 with debts totalling over AU$3 million.

eason Summaries

Longest Winning Streak:2 matches, 30th June - 7th July, 1996.

Longest Losing Streak:10 matches, 7th April - 22nd June, 1996.

References

References

*
*
*