Hunter Mariners
 |
|
| Club information | |
|---|---|
| Full name | Hunter Mariners Rugby League Football Club |
| Founded | 28 April 1995 |
| Departed | 1997 |
| Former details | |
| Ground(s) |
|
| Coach(s) | Graham Murray |
| Captain(s) | Neil Piccinelli |
| Competition | Super League |
| 1997 | 6th of 10 |
| Records | |
| Premierships | 0 |
| Runners-up | 0 |
| Minor premiership | 0 |
| Wooden spoons | 0 |
The Hunter Mariners were an Australian professional rugby league club based in the Hunter Region's largest city, Newcastle. Hunter was formed in mid-1995 and was later disbanded at the end of 1997. The club was formed because of the Super League war, which was the rivalry between the traditional Australian Rugby League competition and the new media driven Super League competition. The team competed in the inaugural and only Super League season in 1997, as well as that year's World Club Challenge.
The Mariners faced much adversity in the Newcastle region because of the Australian Rugby League's Newcastle Knights team being already well established in the region. The club played its home games at Topper Stadium and missed out on the finals of the 1997 Super League season, but made the grand final of the World Club Challenge. The team was overshadowed by the Newcastle Knights who won the ARL competition and were admitted into the 1998 re-united competition. The Mariners were disbanded after being left out of the new competition because they believed that the Hunter region could not support two entities.
The New South Wales Rugby League competition (NSWRL) had been formed in 1908 as the first rugby league competition in Australia. There was a Newcastle based club in the first two seasons of the Sydney-based competition, but they eventually left to form their own Newcastle Rugby League competition. It was not until 1988 that another Newcastle based team was admitted into the NSWRL. In 1995, the Australian Rugby League (ARL) took control of the competition amid the beginning of the Super League war. It was then that News Limited began proposing and deliberating a rival rugby league competition and the twenty teams which competed in the 1995 ARL season were split between the Super League and ARL competitions.
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