NRL GRAND FINAL
The winners of the Australian rugby league football season are decided by the NRL Grand Final. is one of the biggest club championship competitions in the world and a prominent athletic event in Australia. Stadium Australia in Sydney, which served as the main athletics venue for the 2000 Olympic Games, has hosted the competition since 1999. The National Rugby League grand final set a new attendance record for an Australian rugby league game the first time it was played at Stadium Australia, drawing 107,999 spectators.
The grand final used to be contested on Sunday afternoons, but from 2001 to 2007 it started in the evening to take advantage of prime time television. Between 2008 and 2012, a compromise was achieved between the preferred starting time of Nine Network’s official broadcast at 7 p.m. and the customary starting time of 3 p.m., with the grand final starting at 5 p.m. AEDT. The evening start, however, was reinstated in 2013 and has since taken place each year. The grand final did not have a specific date from 1908 to 2000, unlike the VFL/AFL Grand Final, which is customarily held on the last Saturday in September. The grand final, however, has always been held on the Sunday between September 30 and October 6 since 2001 (except from 2020). The week prior to the game, both teams and hundreds of guests gather for the NRL Grand Final Breakfast, a gathering that is shown live on Australian television. However, the meal was abandoned in 2015.
The opening ceremony, which typically includes entertainment and the singing of the national anthem by well-known Australasian and international musical performers, usually takes place before the actual game. The Provan-Summons Trophy, the National Rugby League’s official championship trophy, is customarily dropped off on the playing field by an Australian Army helicopter after pregame entertainment. The winning team receives premiership rings at a presentation ceremony that follows the grand final. The famous Clive Churchill Medal is given to the player selected by the Australian national team selection committee as the player of the match, and the Prime Minister of Australia usually attends to present the Provan-Summons Trophy to the winning captain.
The grand final at Stadium Australia was guaranteed by the New South Wales government in 2019 to take place there until at least 2046. Only “The Australian Super Bowl” has been used in foreign media to describe it and the AFL Grand Final.
HISTORY
The first premiership-deciding match in NSW’s first-grade rugby league was contested at the Royal Agricultural Society Showground in 1908, with Souths defeating Easts 14–12. A match was played as a tiebreaker to determine the season’s premiership winner in 1916, 1922, 1923, and 1924. From 1912 to 1925, there was no finals system in place. The Argus method, which generated a decisive game in two somewhat different ways, was used for finals from 1926 through 1953.
Whether or not they were called grand finals at the time, all of these pivotal games are today regarded as such. The decisive game has been referred to as a grand final from 1954 to the present utilizing a variety of methods, and there is no distinction between grand finals played under the auspices of different regulatory organizations.
NRL GRAND FINAL 2022
The National Rugby League (NRL) is a Rugby League competition made up of 16 teams – 15 from Australia and 1 from New Zealand.
Rugby League is one of the most popular sports in Australia, with 100 million fans tuning into fixtures from home, and an incredible 3 million attending stadiums.
The NRL Grand Final 2022 is the highlight of the Australian sporting calendar and features notable spectacles including pre-match entertainment, and the trophy being flown in by helicopter!
The Australian NRL Grand Final 2022 will take place on Sunday, October 2, 2022, at the Suncorp Stadium, Brisbane. It’s the first time the NRL Grand Final has been played outside of Sydney but excitement for the fixture is still just as intense!