Redcap's BRL

The complete 1957 BRL season is now live on Redcap’s BRL. A summary of every game is available through the 1957 season page.

Some (or, more accurately, me) have argued that Valleys’ undefeated 1955 premiership triumph was a case of a borderline great team dominating an otherwise weak competition, more or less as you’d expect. The achievements of other dominant teams in BRL history, including some Valleys teams, were therefore more impressive.

The 1957 Valleys team were not dominant. For much of the season they lagged behind the defending premiers, Brothers, which wasn’t all that surprising considering the Diehards had lost Ken McCaffery to North Sydney, ‘Dick’ Davies and Norm McFadden to Augathella, and Athol Plater, John Mulgrew and Tom Maccheroni to opportunities elsewhere.

Brothers dominated the league in ’57, losing just once over the course of 18 premiership games when an injury-ravaged team went down to Wynnum-Manly in round 13. Prop Ken Herbert and back-rower Peter Gallagher joined an already formidable forward pack led by the great Brian Davies. Halves Vince Hore and Mick McNamara steered them around impeccably. Winger Frank Mellit continued to score tries for fun.

When Brothers were beaten by Valleys in the President’s Cup Final in June, and beaten-up, losing McNamara, Gallagher and Barry O’Connor to injury, it seemed significant. But after the loss to Wynnum a few days later, they bounced back and beat Valleys the following weekend. They beat them again in the Pike Cup Final, and again in the Major Semi-Final. It was Brothers’ premiership to lose.

And lose it they did. It was the one that got away, and as Gallagher remarked to Steve Haddan, “the ’57 grand final had an everlasting impact. Nobody was considered any chance of beating us… That taught me a lot about being a favourite in a grand final”. Turns out it was a lesson well learned.

Leaving aside the relative merits of the league’s great teams, the Valleys team of ’57 are surely one of the great teams within the Diehard tradition. They didn’t just lose the Major Semi-Final to Brothers, they were outclassed, much more than the 20-12 scoreline would indicate.

In addition to all the players who left before and during the season, half Ray Edwards carried an injury into that semi-final, succumbed and missed the Preliminary Final and Grand Final.

But as they’d done a few times, Valleys managed to cobble together an effective team around Norm Pope who broke the single season point-scoring record for the second year in a row, lock Pay Paulsen who won the Courier Mail’s £50 bonus (about $2000 in 2025) as player of the year, and prolific winger Mick Mulgrew.

Barry Brennan emerged as a dangerous pivot and Mel Hansen proved an effective replacement for Plater. Late in the season, the Diehards added lightweight but dogged back-rower Darby Soper, talented young hooker Bob Gehrke, speedy winger Mick Beirne and bullocking winger Don Lind. Utility man George Souvlis filled in admirably for Edwards. Two tries by Beirne and six goals by Pope got them home by a point in the Grand Final.

Elsewhere, Wests declined. Souths and Wynnum-Manly were mostly terrible. Easts were clearly an awkward team to beat and had some talented players, including the versatile Paul Pyers and rangy back-rower Hec Grieve, but lacked the quality and consistency to mount a serious challenge.

Of most interest was the re-emergence of Norths. While they once again failed to win a final (they hadn’t won a finals game since 1945), they debuted brilliant young five-eighth Bill Thomas, tough back-rower Bob Poulsen and a winger by the name of Fonda Metassa, who scored a tidy 20 tries in his first season. Something scary was brewing at Nundah…

Milestone men

As mentioned, Valleys fullback Norm Pope broke the record for most points in a season for the second year in a row. His 252 points in 1947 took him to 966 in total, more than 300 more than any other player in BRL history at this point.

Veteran Wynnum-Manly centre and captain-coach Keith Brown broke former Valleys winger Garry Barnett’s all-time try-scoring record, finishing the season with a total of 86 three-pointers.

More details about BRL player and competition records is available on the records page.

Editor’s Note

Just a quick thanks to The Brisbane Comp and Maroon Observer for diverting a bit of traffic my way in recent days. I’m not sure I can repay the favour (I don’t often get much traffic), but here goes.

I had the pleasure of a chat with Anthony O’Brien of The Brisbane Comp a few weeks back. He’s already produced some very good content, and it sounds like there’s more to come.

I really appreciate Liam Callaghan’s kind words on Maroon Observer, though I should clarify that I no longer have anything to do with The Roar website (in fact, I think I’m persona non grata there these days).

Never mind. I’ll be back at the State Library on the weekend gathering some more information about the 1960 season for a future update (I like to stay a couple of seasons ahead).

It’s great to see so much new BRL content coming out lately.

More complete BRL seasons are coming soon on Redcap’s BRL.