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New South Wales Rugby League season 1909

1909 NSWRFL season
League New South Wales Rugby Football League
Teams 8
Matches played 42
Points scored 975
Premiers South Sydney colours.svg South Sydney (2nd title)
Minor Premiers South Sydney colours.svg South Sydney (2nd title)
Runners-up Balmain colours.svg Balmain
Wooden Spoon Western Suburbs colours.svg Western Suburbs (1st spoon)
Top point-scorer(s) South Sydney colours.svg Arthur Conlin (43)
Top try-scorer(s) South Sydney colours.svg Tommy Anderson (11)
Left to form local league Newcastle foundation colours.svg Newcastle
Second Grade
Number of teams 8
Premiers Eastern Suburbs colours.svg Eastern Suburbs
Runners-up Glebe colours.svg Glebe
Third Grade
Number of teams 9
Premiers South Sydney Federal
Runners-up Rozelle
Seasons

The 1909 New South Wales Rugby Football League premiership was the second season of Sydney's top-level rugby league football competition, Australia's first. Eight teams contested during the season for the premiership and the Royal Agricultural Society Challenge Shield; seven teams from Sydney and one team from Newcastle, New South Wales.

At the begninning of the season, the nearly broke NSWRFL had met and kicked out its founders Henry Hoyle, Victor Trumper and J J Giltinan. Part-way through the season, Edward Larkin was appointed full-time secretary of the NSWRFL.

Also in 1909 north of the border, the Queensland Rugby Football League got its club competition started for the rebel football code of rugby league.

The teams that made up the 1909 premiership season were the same as the 1908 season with the exception of Cumberland who were dissolved, being unable to field a competitive team. Their last premiership match turned out to be a 45-0 loss at the hands of North Sydney on 25 July 1908, a game where the team had to "borrow" two of North Sydney's officials in order to make up a 13-man side. Seven of Cumberland's players ended up going to Western Suburbs the following year, but only three of these players were able to play another premiership match.

Souths lost only one game in the regular season, to Newcastle in Newcastle, 3 days after the Novocastrians had beaten the New Zealand Māori team.


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Wikipedia

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