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1945 NSWRFL season

1945 New South Wales Rugby Football League
Teams 8
Premiers Eastern Suburbs colours.svg Eastern Suburbs (9th title)
Minor premiers Eastern Suburbs colours.svg Eastern Suburbs (11th title)
Matches played 60
Points scored 1941
Top points scorer(s) Eastern Suburbs colours.svg Dick Dunn (150)
Top try-scorer(s) Newtown colours.svg Chicka Cahill (13)
Western Suburbs colours.svg Jack Snare (13)

The 1945 NSWRFL season was the thirty-eighth New South Wales Rugby Football League premiership season, Sydney’s top-level rugby league club competition, and Australia’s first. Eight teams from across the city contested during the season which culminated in Eastern Suburbs' victory over Balmain in the grand final.

Balmain led 10—5 at half time and the match was evenly balanced throughout the second half. With three minutes to go the Tricolours trailed 17—18. The Roosters were awarded a penalty on half way and Dick Dunn convinced his reluctant captain Ray Stehr that he could make the distance. Dunn successfully kicked the goal from the then unorthodox upright position.

Dunn received Joe Jorgenson’s kick from the restart and booted the ball into touch five metres from the Balmain line. Tricolours’ hooker George Watt won the scrum against the feed and Easts’ classy halves pairing of Sel Lisle and Wally O'Connell put on a move that saw Dunn score in the corner.

Dunn scored 19 of the Tricolours’ 22 points that day carrying with him for luck the sock of his fourteen-month-old daughter in his shorts pocket throughout the match.

Eastern Suburbs 22 (Tries: Dunn 3, J Arnold. Goals: Dunn 5)

defeated

Balmain 18 (Tries: Ponchard 2, Dawes, Nielsen. Goals: Jorgenson 3)


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