NRL Grand Final
The NRL Grand Final is an annual rugby league match to determine the premiers of every National Rugby League season. It is a major sport event in Australia and regarded as the biggest showcase of rugby league football in the world. Since 1999, it has been contested at Stadium Australia in Sydney. The first year it was held at Stadium Australia, it set a new record for attendance at an Australian rugby league game, with 107,999 people attending.
The two teams that play in the grand final are determined from the preceding finals series, where the top eight finishing teams on the season's premiership ladder qualify in a three-week playoff tournament. The grand final had been played on Saturday afternoons and then Sunday afternoons. From 2001 to 2007, the game was moved to an evening start to make the most of prime time television. Between 2008 and 2012, a compromise was reached between official broadcaster Nine Network's preferred starting time of 7pm and the traditional starting time of 3pm, with the grand final beginning at 5pm AEDT. In 2013, the evening start resumed and has occurred since. Previously, the grand final did not have a set date but, with the exception of 2020, since 2001, it has been played the Sunday falling between 30 September and 6 October, preceding the Labour Day public holiday that falls on the first Monday of October in New South Wales.
The game itself is usually preceded by an opening ceremony featuring a [|headline musical act], a Welcome to Country, and a rendition of the Australian national anthem sung by well-known Australasian and international artists. The Provan-Summons Trophy, the NRL's premiership trophy, is usually delivered to the field by an Australian Army helicopter shortly before kick off. At the conclusion of the grand final there is a presentation ceremony where the winning team are awarded premiership rings. The player judged to be the man of the match by the selectors of the ARL national team is awarded the prestigious Clive Churchill Medal; the ARLC chairman, NRL CEO, and on occasion the Prime Minister of Australia are typically on stage to congratulate the winning coach and players, and ultimately hand the Provan-Summons Trophy to the winning captain.
In 2019, the Government of New South Wales secured the grand final for Stadium Australia until at least 2046.
History
First grade rugby league in NSW began in 1908, the first premiership deciding game was played at the Royal Agricultural Society Showground, with Souths defeating Easts 14–12. From 1912 to 1925, no finals system was in place; however, in 1916, 1922, 1923 and 1924, a match was played as a tiebreaker to decide the season's premiership winner. From 1926 to 1953, finals were played under the Argus system, which produced a deciding game in two slightly differing ways.All of these deciding games are now deemed to be grand finals, whether they were referred to as such at the time or not. From 1954 to the present, using a variety of systems, the deciding match has been explicitly termed a grand final, and no distinction is made between grand finals played under the auspices of the various governing bodies.
Stadiums
The NRL Grand Final is traditionally held in Sydney, as most NRL clubs are based in there and the current venue for the grand final, Stadium Australia is the second highest capacity stadium in Australia, after the Melbourne Cricket Ground.It was announced in June 2019 that the 2020 and 2021 Grand Finals would be played at the Sydney Cricket Ground, while Stadium Australia underwent redevelopment. However, after the Government of New South Wales scrapped plans to redevelop Stadium Australia in July 2020, the matches would return to being planned at Stadium Australia until at least 2046.
In 2021, the NRL Grand Final was played at Lang Park in Brisbane, as it was not possible for the match to be played at Stadium Australia due to the COVID-19 lockdown in New South Wales. It was the first major rugby league grand final to be played in Queensland since the 1997 Super League grand final.
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 Qualification for World Club ChallengeThe winners of the grand final qualify to play the winners of the Super League Grand Final in the World Club Challenge.Trophy and awardsProvan-Summons TrophyThe Provan-Summons Trophy is the NRL's main prize, awarded to the team that wins the premiership. Its sculptured design is similar to the Winfield Cup trophy, which was introduced for the 1982 NSWRFL season. It is a three-dimensional cast of a famous photo called The Gladiators, which depicts a mud-soaked Norm Provan of St. George and Arthur Summons of Western Suburbs embracing after the 1963 NSWRFL season's grand final. It was not officially named the Provan-Summons Trophy until 2013, the 50th anniversary of the 1963 grand final. The trophy is awarded following each grand final to the captain of the winning club.Clive Churchill MedalThe Clive Churchill Medal is the award given to the player judged to be man-of-the-match in the National Rugby League's annual grand final. The award was created to honour Clive Churchill, one of the greatest rugby league players in Australian history, following his death in 1985. A prestigious honour in the NRL, the medal's recipient is chosen by the selectors of the Australian national team and announced and awarded to the player judged best and fairest on the ground at every post-grand final ceremony.The Clive Churchill Medal has been awarded ever since the 1986 NSWRL season when its first recipient was Parramatta's Peter Sterling. The only three players to have won the award more than once are Canberra's Bradley Clyde, Melbourne Storm's Billy Slater and Penrith Panthers' Nathan Cleary. In 2010, the Melbourne Storm were stripped of the 2007 and 2009 premierships due to salary cap breaches exposed by the NRL, however the Clive Churchill Medallists from those years still continue to be recognised. Premiership ringsThe NRL present premiership rings for the players and coach of grand final winning sides. After the 2004 NRL Grand Final which was won by the Bulldogs, one of their players, Johnathan Thurston gave his premiership ring to teammate Steve Price who missed the decider due to injury. The Melbourne Storm were stripped of their premierships in 2007 and 2009, but the players involved in those premierships were still allowed to keep their premiership rings. In 2014 NRL premiership ring was worth $8000 made by Zed N Zed Jewellery. Since 2015, Affinity Diamonds have produced the NRL premiership ringsPrize moneyof AUD$400,000 is awarded to the victorious club.However the amount is probably not reflective of the magnitude of participating in the event. It is often assumed simply that the winner of the premiership typically experiences an increase in revenue through increases in membership and merchandise sales. ResultsThe following is a list of Grand Finals in the NRL era.
1Reduced crowd due to stadium capacity restrictions The 2021 Grand Final was held in Brisbane for the first time in the competition's history due to an ongoing COVID-19 lockdown in New South Wales, which prompted the NRL to relocate it from Stadium Australia in Sydney, where every NRL Grand Final since 1999 had been hosted. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, the match was attended by only 39,322 spectators because the Government of Queensland limited Lang Park to seventy-five percent of its maximum capacity. |