Why Sharks had to rush their 1986 team photo

BY JAMES SMITH 

A terrific Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks team photo appeared in a 1986 edition of Big League magazine, which was the official publication of the NSWRL at the time.

This team pin-up, as team posters were called back then, featured in a late-season edition of the magazine. The players, trainers and coaches sat for what must have been a lightning-fast team photo, with a beautiful but fierce storm appearing to fil the backdrop of the final team shot.

It’s a fantastic image, and one very representative of the way things were done in even elite-level rugby league in Sydney in the mid-1980s.

The front row of players doesn’t seem to have been offered chairs and instead, sat cross-legged on the playing surface of the then-named Ronson Field. Perhaps this had something to do with the speed at which that storm must have been moving - not enough time to set-up chairs, let’s get on with it!

The Cronulla Sutherland Sharks on team photo day in 1986, as they appeared in Big League magazine.

Just on the issue of team posters in Big League, how awesome was it when your club’s poster appeared in the mag? It was as if your team was special; that your team was the star club of the week; that everything else in that week’s magazine revolved around your club, because your blokes filled the very centre pages in a full-colour team photo. 

The appearance of this team pic in the Big League would've provided Sharks fans with some much-needed team spirit heading into the semi-finals for 1986, which they knew their club wasn't going to be a part of. 

Heading into Round 26, the Shire boys sat a whopping five points adrift of the equal-fifth-placed Bears, Tigers and Dragons, with the Panthers just behind that classy trio.  

At least the Sharks were at home for that final round, proudly hosting North Sydney at that stormy Ronson Field.




Popular posts from this blog

Demolition Derby at end of 1986 Kangaroo Tour

Image
BY JAMES SMITH How would something like this go down with the media and image-managers today, you reckon? Brett Cochrane’s two magnificent photo essays of the 1986 and 1990 Kangaroos Tours, which he made into the books "Mud Sweat And Cheers” and “Twenty Eight Heroes” respectively, contain some of the most dramatic and haunting rugby league-related images ever captured. But for silliness and tomfoolery and mug lairness-capturing, this spread of shots will never be beaten.  That’s Royce Simmons pretending to have been caught in the middle of a two-car prang on the ’86 Tour, and that’s Gene Miles looking on and Wally Lewis in the background shots. Scenes from Brett Cochrane's book "Mud, Sweat And Cheers".   Brett’s caption reads “a demolition derby at the end of the tour was the novel means by which players disposed of their cars”.  This checks out. I went looking for evidence of a Kangaroos “demolition derby” (which, incidentally, my Dead In Goal podcast partner Jeff C...
Read more

What rugby league looked like back in 2002

Image
BY JAMES SMITH This magnificent beast is the official 2002 Rugby League Album, as issued by The Daily and Sunday Telegraphs two decades ago. Not exactly considered retro yet by any stretch, it is still a fantastic time capsule, and an interesting look back at who was gracing the fields of the NRL in just fifth season since the ARL and Super League got back together to form a unified competition. The papers would have released a coupon or token of some sort so that you could score the folder initially, along with a starter set of cards, and then the reader (in this case, your author's dad) had to wait patiently as each player in the set was available to pick up at your local servo or newsagent. The 2002 Rugby League Album, as published by The Daily and Sunday Telegraphs.  As you can see, and speaking of things unified, this folder contains representatives from the great Northern Eagles, who were in action 20 years ago. There were some truly horrific NRL logos back in the day -...
Read more

Footy emblem cards the greatest prize of all

Image
BY JAMES SMITH In the playground back in the olden days, forget money - these pieces of cardboard with pictures of footy players on one side and a bunch of stats on the back and quirky quotes where what really made the school yard tick at recess and lunch. Occasionally you’d come across somebody who knew someone else, whose older brother had almost collected an entire set of these distracting pieces of memorabilia.   Mostly though it was left to us mere mortals to try to collect as many as possible before either the footy season ended, or your school banned them because they were, as said, proving too distracting.   Not sure how popular they are with kids today, but the banning of footy cards at schools actually happened. Imagine having that problem as a sporting code; trading cards featuring your game are that distracting that they are taken off kids. Amazing.     Rugby league club emblem cards from the late 1980s.   The cards featured in the image in this arti...
Read more