1989 NSWRL season
The 1989 NSWRL season was the 82nd season of professional rugby league football in Australia. Sixteen clubs competed for the New South Wales Rugby League's J.J. Giltinan Shield and Winfield Cup Premiership during the season, which culminated in a grand final between Balmain and Canberra. This season NSWRL teams also competed for the 1989 Panasonic Cup. This would be the last time a mid-season competition was played concurrent with the regular season. From 1990 it would become a pre-season competition. Season summary Twenty-two regular season rounds were played from March till August, resulting in a top five of South Sydney, Penrith, Balmain, Canberra and Cronulla (who finished equal with Brisbane but beat them in a play-off for fifth) to battle it out in the finals. This year Penrith forward Geoff Gerard set new record for most first-grade NSWRL premiership games at 320 before retiring at the end of the season. The 1989 season's Rothmans Medal was shared by Cronulla-Sutherland forward Gavin Miller and Newcastle front-rower Mark Sargent. Miller also won the Dally M Award and was named Rugby League Week's player of the year. The grand finals: Canberra Raiders vs Newcastle Knights (Senior Grade) North Sydney Bears vs Parramatta Eels (Reserve Grade) South Sydney Rabbitohs vs Canberra Raiders (Under-21s Grade) The winners in all grades were: Canberra Raiders (Senior Grade) North Sydney Bears (Reserve Grade) South Sydney Rabbitohs (Under-21s Grade) The State of Origin Series Queensland vs New South Wales Teams The lineup of teams remained unchanged from the previous season, with sixteen clubs contesting the premiership, including five Sydney-based foundation teams, another six from Sydney, two from greater New South Wales, two from Queensland, and one from the Australian Capital Territory. Advertising 1989 was a watershed year for the New South Wales Rugby League's advertising commencing an association with Tina Turner that would last until 1995. In those years the NSWRL, its ad agency Hertz Walpole and promotions consultant Brian Walsh would fundamentally change the image and popular perception of the game in Australia. Agency copywriter Paul Knights inspired by the brutal simplicity of the game, saw a link to the lyrics in Tina Turner's 1987 hit What You Get Is What You See written by Terry Britten & Graham Lyle. Negotiations were assisted by the fact that her Australian manager Roger Davies was familiar with the game and the rights deal was easily done. There was initially no intention to film Tina performing the song but at the last minute an availability appeared in her schedule. The agency and a production crew were despatched to England along with the NSWRL's General Manager John Quayle bearing bags of balls, jumpers and branded goalpost pads. Leading players Cliff Lyons (Manly) and Gavin Miller (Cronulla) were both in England at the time playing for Leeds and Hull Kingston Rovers respectively and made themselves available for the film and promotional stills shoot with Tina. In the finished ad the Tina footage is interspersed with the usual big hits and crowd scenes plus