St. George Dragons
Entering the New South Wales Rugby Football League in 1921, the St George club won 15 premierships including 11 in succession between 1956 and 1966, still an equal current world record for sporting competitions (shared with Bayern Munich).
Undeterred, the St George Rugby League Football Club took form in 1910 when a team played in the NSWRL 3rd Grade Competition.
Before the start of the 1921 season, trial matches were played at Sans Souci and training took place at the Drill Hall in the Sydney suburb of Arncliffe.
Their inaugural premiership had still not been achieved when at the end of the decade, following the 1939 season, the club moved its home ground back to Hurstville Oval.
[3] The long wait finally ended in 1941 when St George defeated Eastern Suburbs 31–14 at the Sydney Cricket Ground to take their inaugural First Grade premiership.
St George captained by Herb Narvo and starring the backline brothers Jack and Ray Lindwall were runners up again in 1946 losing to Balmain 12–13.
Club official Jack Mogridge offered Whitcombe a two-year contract at £600 per season as player-coach plus costs of transport and a lucrative job, (based on increases in average earnings, this would be approximately £59,340 in 2016).
They were captained by the Test five-eighth Johnny Hawke with Frank Facer as Vice Captain and contained a champion backline including Noel Pidding, Doug McRitchie, Matt McCoy and Ron Roberts.The Dragons had lost form in the back-end of the season but came home strongly beating minor premiers South Sydney in the semi, and Balmain in a final before meeting Souths again in the Grand final.
That year the brilliant young lock Johnny Raper made his grand final debut at centre replacing the injured Reg Gasnier.
[7] The writers Collis & Whitaker, Larry Writer and Heads & Middleton have all attributed the reign of success to three key factors:,[8][9] By the early 1960s St George players were afforded movie star status in Sydney and names such as Reg Gasnier and Johnny Raper were highly familiar as were later those of Graeme Langlands, Billy Smith and Johnny King.
A new Leagues Club was opened on the Princes Highway at Carlton, and would become the hub of social life in the district and dubbed "the Taj Mahal".
That same day saw the creation of an iconic image when Sydney Morning Herald photographer John O'Gready captured a photo which would become titled "The Gladiators" and which showed the essence of good sportsmanship as the Saints' captain Norm Provan and West's captain Arthur Summons embraced post-match in exhausted camaraderie while barely recognisable, covered head-to-toe in mud.
In 1965 another record was set when a crowd of 78,056 football supporters packed the SCG to see the Dragons triumph over Souths, and the tally reached ten consecutive premierships in Norm Provan's farewell match.
While shaded by the spectacular success of the previous decade, the Dragons remained competitive throughout most of the 1970s winning premierships in 1977 and 1979, being runner-up Grand Finalists in 1971 and 1975 and finishing the regular season in 3rd place or better in all years excepting 1974 and 1978.
It was largely due to their combined class and the apparent on-field intuitive understanding of each other's kicking and positional game that the club showed consistency of form through to the mid-1970s.
[14] During 1970, St George became the first club in any code of Football to provide three Kangaroo Captains in the same season in Graeme Langlands, Billy Smith and rugby-union convert Phil Hawthorne.
The Dragons fought back with tries to Barry Beath and Ted Walton, while Langlands converted both including a magnificent sideline kick giving the Saints fans great hope of an upset.
In 1977, enjoying a resurgence under new coach Harry Bath, St George met Parramatta in a thrilling Grand Final, which went into 20 minutes of extra time.
Reddy ever the enforcer in his career, had played a brutal defensive first half resulting in post-match comments that Parramatta's Ray Price finished the game looking like he'd been used as a punching bag.
A decision was made at the end of 1987 to move St George from the SCG to the Belmore Sports Ground in 1988 with the hope of returning to Jubilee Oval Kogarah at a later stage.
Ted Glossop coached for a single season in 1988, tasting success when the Dragons won the mid-week 1988 Panasonic Cup competition.
In front of 22,000 spectators at Parramatta Stadium, with millions more watching the game on television, the Dragons defeated the Balmain Tigers 16–8 with prizemoney totalling $150,000.
The first game in the "City of Churches" in 1991 saw the Dragons defeat Balmain 16-2 in front of 28,884 fans which was in fact the NSWRL's highest non-finals attendance for the season.
Twelve months later in 1993, there were high expectations for the Dragons having comfortably accounted for Canberra 31–10 and Canterbury 27–12 in the semi-finals, and with the Broncos having scraped into the finals in fifth place.
Only one Bronco (Peter Ryan), and four of the Dragons (Jason Stevens, Nathan Brown, Gorden Tallis and Phil Blake) had not played in the 1992 Grand Final.
In 1995, after exploring the possibility of a merger with the Roosters in an attempt to match the turnover of the all-conquering Brisbane Broncos, chief executive Geoff Carr was sacked by his board.
[19] St George played in their last Grand Final as a single club when they faced off against Manly-Warringah in the 1996 decider, with the Sea Eagles winning 20-8 in front of 40,985 fans at the Sydney Football Stadium.
St George's last Grand Final captain was Queensland State of Origin and Australian test centre Mark Coyne.
The Dragons' first points of the Grand Final came in the 37th minute when Wayne Bartrim kicked a penalty awarded after Manly forward Owen Cunningham was penalised for stripping the ball.
Manly back-rower Steve Menzies then broke his way through Saints' defence to score next to the posts, giving Ridge an easy conversion kick.
