The 1997 World Club Championship was an expansion of the World Club Challenge concept by Super League. The rugby competition was restructured to include all 22 clubs from the Australasian Super League and the Super League championships and was known as the Visa World Club Championship due to sponsorship. As it was contested over six rounds in two hemispheres, with A$1 million prize money (GBP 640,000), the competition was prohibitively expensive to stage, with suggestions that it cost A$6 million.[1] This coupled with the poor ratings and attendances that were achieved both in Australia and Europe reportedly resulted in a loss over A$5 million, and the World Club Challenge was not staged again for a number of years. No British teams progressed further than the quarter-finals, with two Australian teams reaching the final (played at the Ericsson Stadium in Auckland, New Zealand): the dominant Brisbane Broncos club and the ill-fated Hunter Mariners.[2]
Format
The competition was held during the second season of the European Super League competition and the inaugural season of the Australasian Super League season. Both competitions paused their competitions for the first three rounds in June, and again for the second round of matches in July-August.
Teams in each competition were seeded into two pools to ensure that the leading teams would play each other.[3] The Australasian teams were split into a pool of six teams that contained the teams that had finished highly in the 1996 ARL season, and a pool of four teams that included the expansion Super League franchises Hunter Mariners and Adelaide Rams. The European Super League teams were split into two pools of six teams in order of the final positions of the clubs during the 1996 Super League season. Promoted club Salford Reds joined Pool B.
With only four teams in the Australasian Pool B, the six European teams had two bye weekends.
The competition saw five Australasian teams tour Europe for each set of three match weekends, with five European teams simultaneously touring Australasia.
Following the completion of the pool matches, the top three teams from both of the competitions Pool A progressed to the quarter finals, with the winner of the Australasian Pool B. The winner of the European Pool B faced the fourth-placed team from Pool A in an elimination qualifier for a place in the quarter finals.[4] The playoffs took place after the completion of the respective Super League competitions.
Credit card company Visa was announced as the competition sponsor just before the European launch of the championship at Huddersfield. The sponsorship was described as a "substantial investment to help offset the estimated £2 million operational costs."[5]
Pool stage tables
The Australasian and European teams were each divided into two pools for the 1997 World Club Challenge. Each pool had six teams, with the exception of Australasia B, which had the two lowest placed Super League-aligned teams and the two newly formed teams: the Hunter Mariners and the Adelaide Rams. The finals series was contested between the top three teams in Australasia Pool A and Europe Pool A, and the top team from Australasia Pool B and Europe Pool B.
In their only year of existence, this would be the only final that the Hunter Mariners would appear in.
Three tries in 12 minutes from Brisbane Broncos centre Darren Smith put the Broncos in a strong position in the first half to lead 26–0 inside 30 minutes, with the Hunter Mariners only score a try to Nick Zisti just before the break.[7]
After the interval, the Mariners came close to scoring, but were denied twice by the video referee.[7]John Carlaw and Zisti would score tries to reduce the margin to 14 points,[8][9] but two late tries to the Broncos through Wendell Sailor and Steve Renouf gave the Brisbane side a dominant victory.[7]
The Broncos collected A$1 million for winning the competition, with the Mariners collecting A$500,000 which the club split 50-50 with the players.[10]
The dominance of the Australasian sides in the competition led to the Rugby Football League appointing Joe Lydon to head a commission to provide an explanation.[12] The general conclusion was that the Australian sides were no more skillful than the European teams, the main difference as it had been in international football since the late 1970s, was fitness, something that they were working on by the time of the season ending Super League Test series between the Super League Australians and the Great Britain Lions in England in November.
^Mascord, Steve (17 October 1997). "Gold Coast hunts the Mariners". The Sydney Morning Herald. Sydney, New South Wales: John Fairfax Publications Pty Limited. p. 45.
^Wilson, Andy (1 June 1997). "Ambitious project means global dawning". The Observer. London, United Kingdom. p. 52.
^Fitzpatrick, Paul (6 June 1997). "Show time in the world acid test". The Guardian. London, United Kingdom. p. B7.
^"Visa invests in world club championship". The Times. London, United Kingdom. 5 June 1997. p. 47.
^ abcdef"World Club Championship - Fixtures". Sunday Mirror. London, United Kingdom. 1 June 1997. p. 69.
^ abc"Rugby League: World Club C'ship: Broncos on top of the world Brisbane Broncos 36 Hunter Mariners 12". The Guardian. London, United Kingdom. 18 October 1997. p. 10:1.
^Mascord, Steve (18 October 1997). "In-limbo Mariners fall gamely to Broncos". Sydney Morning Herald. Sydney, New South Wales: John Fairfax Publications Pty Limited. p. 64.
^Hadfield, Dave (18 October 1997). "Rugby League: World Club Championship Final - Broncos' early burst leaves Mariners marooned". The Independent. London, United Kingdom. p. 23.
^Drzyzga, Ben (18 October 1997). "Broncos burst Mariners' bubble". Newcastle Herald. Newcastle, New South Wales: Newcastle Newspapers Pty Limited. p. 22.
