Editor’s note
First, a mea culpa. It seems I missed a game in the 1919 season. There was a third game on the afternoon of 2 August, with Valleys beating West End 21-11 at Davies Park.
Because I missed this one, I assumed the One-Round Cup Final between Wests and Valleys was also a premiership game. While One-Round/Pike Cup finals often doubled as premiership fixtures, it was more common for them to be stand-alone events around this time, and I think that was the case in 1919.
The 1919 season page and its subsidiaries have been amended to reflect this. What was round 8 becomes round 7, and so on until the end of the regular season. The Valleys-West End game has been added to what is now round 9. The catch-up game between Coorparoo and Railways on 23 August, previously part of round 7, has been moved to what is now round 11. The Wests-Valleys cup final now has its own separate page.
Many thanks to Andrew from Rugby League Project for his time and collaboration in figuring this out.
Unstoppable forces
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 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 encounter with a red-hot Wests team in round seven. That game aside, they conceded a total of 36 points in nine regular season games.
Normal service will resume shortly when the 1959 season goes up. Stay tuned…
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