By WRL Historian, Carey Clements

In keeping with the huge popularity of rugby league in New Zealand in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, a plan was hatched by the national body, and began 30 years ago this year.

The plan was the Lion Red Cup, which saw franchises and not provinces or clubs compete for a handsome trophy, amidst huge media hype in promise that the code was only going to get more following from some members of the public that had never got behind league before.

It was not the first time, the NZRL had tried to be innovative, through having the Rothman’s Quadrangular provincial tournaments in the 1960’s through to having the Wrangler Cup in the 1980’s as a contest for the country’s top clubs at the end of the season. 

The genesis to the competition began in 1989 when during an annual conference of District Leagues, there was a unanimous directive given to the NZRL Board of Directors to ‘progress the introduction of the national club competition’.

A lot of this came about through league being given wider media exposure, especially on television, at a time when union was still an ‘amateur’ sport and was heavily rivalled by the NRL's superb marketing team.

Add to the fact that the Kiwis made it to the 1988 World Cup final a year earlier before a sold-out Eden Park and some All Blacks were now changing codes in chase of fat contracts, league was on the crest of the wave.

This resulted in the NZRL gaining a record income of close to $2 million, which was partly bulked up from the profit of $715,000 coming from the recent Kiwis-Kangaroos series.

And so after three years of planning and negotiations, the NZRL through its marketing subsidiary Rugby League New Zealand Limited and its General Manager Graham Carden launched the Lion Red Cup on August 26, 1993.

This was a competition that was never before seen with 12 teams taking part including four from Auckland and two each from Wellington and the South Island.

Three teams, Manawatu, Northland and the South Island’s West Coast all missed out despite putting in bids, while other provinces such as Otago and Southland were not even considered.

“We looked at the ability of the area to sustain the momentum that the national club competition will generate,” Carden said at the time. “Hawkes Bay and Taranaki were invited to join because they were very well organised, well structured and have the support of their communities.”

Overall, the competition was budgeted at $4 million with each club having a budget of $365,000, which included $150,000 as salaries towards players and coaches.

Some like the former 1983 Kiwi John Ackland, worried about where these massive costs would come from and even warned of them a year earlier in a 1992 column with the magazine, Kiwi League Monthly.

“While I think a national competition is a great idea, I personally have serious doubts as to whether it can be sustained in a national sense in its proposed format for a variety of reasons.”

Ackland went on further to write, “but the point I’m making is that its going to be very hard to encourage lasting support for artificially created teams especially in the areas of administration and gate paying support.

“Frankly, I personally don’t believe a purely national competition can survive for any length of time no matter how generous the sponsors are.”

Those sponsors as it turned out to be were Lion Breweries (who were marked as the prime sponsor), while Ansett New Zealand, Bluebird, Canterbury Clothing, Pepsi, TVNZ and Radio New Zealand also gave strong backing. Each franchise were allowed to negotiate with a local sponsor or sponsors for their jerseys, so that for example during the first year Projex Equipment Hire were the principal sponsors behind the Wellington City Dukes and Firestone backed the Hutt Valley Firehawks.

And so when 1994 came around, things were ready to roll with half of the 12 teams being coached by former Kiwis, including James Leuluai for the Dukes, although in the background, Ken Laban, was never far away.

A handsome 15kg and 80cm trophy depicting a raised Lion was the main trophy up for grabs and 22 games were scheduled for each of the teams before playoffs began.

The Basin Reserve was selected as the main home ground for the Dukes and Fraser Park likewise the same for the Firehawks.

Overall, the Hutt Valley side finished statistically the better of the two with nine wins from 22 games, to finish in 8^th place, while the Dukes finished 9^th as a result of having eight wins from 22 games.

Three players: Denvour Johnston, Paul Edwards and the late Jason Bell played in all 22 games for the Firehawks, while three others including James Patea played in 21 matches.

At the time, Patea was a debt collector for Inland Revenue and had been part of the successful Wainuiomata side which two years earlier had won the Wellington premier grand final and the Lion Red Cup (not the same as the future franchise model trophy) as the top national club in beating Northcote (Auckland) 25-18 in the final at Carlaw Park.

 “It was exciting to begin with, but it did wear you down after a while with the amount of weekend travel that was involved,” Patea recalled, ‘and then having to go back to work on the Monday.”

The first year saw good crowds turn out at Fraser Park and for Patea an education in playing for a franchise team.

“We had to learn to play along side others that came from other clubs such as Upper Hutt, Randwick and Petone, and whilst there was always going to be rivalry there, it also meant that friendships were created, which still last to this day.”

At the time, rugby league in Wellington was strong and as a result Patea believes there was enough talent both inside the city and outside it, to sustain both franchise teams and at club level.

“When the players were not required to play for their franchise, they just went back to their clubs and go on with their jobs there,” he recalled.

Although also a player from the Hutt Valley, Arnold Lomax was head hunted by Laban to play for the rival Dukes. A competitive powerful forward, Lomax looked odds on by the time the season was nearing to be selected for the Kiwis alongside his brothers John and David.

However, in a game in Christchurch he ‘stupidly’ went high in a tackle and broke his arm, and only found later, that the selectors were at this game and had shown particular interest in seeing how Lomax had performed.

“There were times I just could not help myself because I guess of my competitive nature and this got to the better of me on more than one occasion,” he recalled.

Besides Lomax, the Dukes had other problems and as noted by the then Dominion league reporter Peter Bidwell, one of them was their decision to play at the Basin Reserve and “because of their poor start to their season campaign, they failed to attract more than token support there, and with the ground being expensive to hire, it would have been better off to play at the more intimate Rugby League Park.”

By early October, Bidwell noted in another article, that the competition was facing a million-dollar loss, in what Ackland had foreseen two years earlier.

However the NZRL remember bullish about it which the then Acting NZRL President, Allen Gore, felt was only a ‘temporary setback.”

Gore had been told by Carden the loss was actually only around $300,000, but later found out the figure was worse.

The leaking finances meant that the Dukes adopted a no pay for policy that month and that the Firehawks under Chairman, Ken English, had to seek for new and more hefty sponsorship.

Main competition Lion Breweries however kept the faith and told the media and the NZRL they were keen to continue for another year, despite a review finding in September, more than $300,000 was now in debt.

Suggestion was then thrown that the Dukes and the Firehawks merge, but after budgets were revised and certain areas thinned down, the Lion Red Cup still went ahead in 1995 with both Patea and Lomax, both switching allegiances and playing for the Hutt Valley franchise.

The successful playing, but troubled financial competition continued on until 1996, before ending. The irony is that the Lion Red Cup jerseys are highly sought after as collection pieces for individuals and as a result, could have brought the controlling body, back towards being in black. Super League however then made its arrival in New Zealand. But that as they say, is a story for another day.

Article added: Thursday 01 August 2024