Unstoppable forces – the 1919 Brisbane Rugby League season
The 1919 Brisbane Rugby League season is now live in Redcap’s BRL. See how Valleys won their third-straight premiership in a season disrupted by the Spanish Flu pandemic.
The fighting in Europe was over but another horror loomed: the ‘Spanish’ Influenza pandemic. Health authorities set up two main isolation hospitals in Brisbane to deal with the burgeoning case load, one at St Laurence’s, the other at the Exhibition Grounds.
The league had little choice but to relocate to ‘the dairy’, Davies Park at West End, with its ‘abominable’ tram service, lack of seating and scant cover from the elements. Despite everything, crowds flocked throughout the season.
Officially, despite every club having players go down, somehow only one top-grade game was lost – West End’s flu-induced forfeit to Railways in round 4. However, the final table and apparently rearranged draw in rounds five and six indicate West End were missing for a few weeks. The effects of the pandemic were likely felt much more in the lower grades.
The league’s seemingly non-stop weirdness continued. Unsurprisingly, player eligibility was an issue. Very surprisingly, it was Wests taking the high ground when they contested the eligibility of Railways’ A McMahon after their loss to the ‘public service team’ in round three. Railways were not best pleased when the result was overturned and a replay ordered, or after they lost the replay to Wests, a team which had quit the previous season in protest at being sanctioned for flagrantly fielding two ineligible players.
Then there was the indefensible six-team finals series, which makes no sense no matter how you look at it. The press at the time seemed to have little idea of what was supposed to happen after completion of the three elimination finals. Harry Sunderland, who according to Steve Haddan had a personal financial stake in gate takings from the finals, was probably making it up on the run.
In the end, it was the unstoppable force of Valleys who prevailed for a third-straight year. One could argue they’d had a lot of luck the previous two seasons, but there was nothing lucky about this one. The only real off day they had was their encouter with a red-hot Wests team in round eight. That game aside, they conceded a total of 28 points in nine regular season games.
Stay tuned for more BRL seasons, coming soon on Redcap’s BRL…
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