Redcap's BRL

After careful consideration, the 1929 BRL season record has been revised. All the results previously included on this site were correct, though one of these games has now been excluded. Six additional games have been included. All details are available from the 1929 season page. The following is why…

The early history of the Brisbane Rugby League is not an easy topic to research. This website probably wouldn’t exist if it was. A lot of information has been lost and will probably never be recovered, and what remains can be difficult to find, difficult to interpret or, frequently, both.

Not that I’m complaining – the joy of research is in piecing together puzzles, and this project has provided plenty of them.

Then there’s the 1929 season – perhaps the one puzzle from BRL history which might never quite be solved.

There are some things we can say for certain. The season was played in the shadow of the BRL’s bitter split from the Queensland Rugby League, with the breakaway QRL competition featuring teams from Valleys, Brothers and the Ipswich league and played in competition with the BRL. The QRL more than likely contributed to the messy competition format played under the BRL banner.

University won their second-straight premiership after victories over Valleys and Coorparoo in the finals. Coorparoo won the Pike Cup from University in impressive fashion. There were also a few other cup competitions played alongside/in conjunction with the premiership season.

There was the City Cup (an early version of the President’s Cup), the BRL Officials Cup, a hastily arranged, one-off competition which seems to have been an exercise in maintaining public interest given the perceived threat from the QRL, and the Kaye Cup, a late-season version of the Pike Cup which never made much sense (and made no sense whatsoever in a competition with the challenger rule).

The delineation between the premiership season and these other cups is where things get murky and complicated. Which were premiership games, which were cup games and which were both?

When researching other seasons, errors in particular press reports and inconsistencies between different press reports, while challenging, usually pointed to reasonable and logical explanations when considered together.

Not so in 1929 – some reports flat-out contradict one another, while others simply don’t make sense. For example, the Daily Standard published a league table in late August which had teams in positions they couldn’t possibly have occupied at that point. The Brisbane Courier and Truth published contradictory reports in relation to some of the delineation questions, with no clarification from the other papers of the time.

My first attempt at piecing it together relied heavily on the league table published in Steve Haddan’s Our Game, which has been an invaluable guide over the course of this project and from which I’ve rarely strayed far.

But some nagging doubts remained regarding the exclusion of a handful of games on rather tenuous grounds. Then again, no matter which way you sliced it, the season didn’t fit together without some games being excluded. Some were cup games, some were premiership games and some were both. But which ones were which?

When Rugby League Project recently recommenced updating its BRL pages and kindly collaborated with Redcap’s BRL on a couple of the trickier seasons, I made a point of seeking a fresh-eyed take on the 1929 BRL puzzle. Chances are I’d missed something and couldn’t see it through the thicket in my head.

Turns out I had missed something – the University-Valleys game on 7 September was the Kaye Cup Final and therefore almost certainly not a premiership game. Still though, the puzzle wasn’t solved.

Long story short, after much deliberation, Rugby League Project and Redcap’s BRL have arrived at a new hypothesis and a revised 1929 season overview. I can’t say with certainty that we’ve got it right – there are a few too many apocryphal reports and contradictions – but I do think this is more likely than what I originally published.

For reference, this is the table I initially published. While it’s not the same as the table published in Our Game, it is substantially similar.

Team	Played	Won	Lost	Drew	For	Against	Diff	Points
University	12	10	2	0	217	136	81	20
Valleys	12	8	4	0	153	99	54	16
Carlton	12	7	4	1	157	130	27	15
Coorparoo	12	6	5	1	115	150	-35	13
Grammars	12	4	8	0	132	147	-15	8
Brothers	11	2	7	2	115	161	-46	6
Wests	11	2	9	0	113	170	-57	4

This is the revised table, with only two games excluded – the Pike Cup Final and the Kaye Cup Final, both of which I’m reasonably certain were played outside the premiership competition. Under this scenario, all City Cup and Officials Cup games doubled as premiership games. The game between Carlton and Coorparoo on 7 September, initially included in the final set of premiership fixtures alongside the Kaye Cup Final, has been deemed a playoff, with Carlton’s victory breaking the tie with Coorparoo, partly obviating the discrepancy in games played between those two clubs and Valleys, and taking Carlton into second place overall, which means the finals draw makes much more sense.

Team	Played	Won	Lost	Drew	For	Against	Diff	Points
University	13	10	3	0	211	124	87	20
Valleys	13	8	5	0	153	127	26	16
Carlton	13	7	5	1	142	136	6	15
Coorparoo	12	7	4	1	101	113	-12	15
Grammars	13	4	9	0	134	172	-38	8
Brothers	12	3	7	2	133	166	-33	8
Wests	12	3	9	0	142	178	-36	6

Brothers and Wests would’ve played an extra game but for an influenza outbreak which saw their final round game cancelled. As for the rest, other possibilities – byes, stand-alone cup ties, other scenarios which make less sense and no sense whatsoever – have been considered, but this is the least arbitrary scenario which makes sense.

A big thanks to Andrew from Rugby League Project for helping me clear the thicket. Thanks also to Roger Waite for assisting with my enquiries, and to Steve Haddan for acknowledging them.

As always, your feedback is welcome, and I’d love to hear from any other historians out there who’ve considered the puzzle of the 1929 BRL.

Finally, we apologise for the inconvenience. Normal programming will resume shortly.

More new complete BRL seasons are coming shortly on Redcap’s BRL.