Australian rugby league premiers

History

The first season of rugby league in New South Wales was held in 1908 and run by the New South Wales Rugby Football League. The premiership was formed as a breakaway competition from the amateur rugby union competition that existed in the Sydney district at the time, with which players had fallen out of heart with due to increased revenue from the game not being reflected in player allowments. At the end of the 1908 season, South Sydney became the first team to win the New South Wales premiership. Queensland Rugby League was established in 1908 also, and ran their inaugural season in 1909. Both states ran parallel state competitions from that time.

During the 1980s, the New South Wales competition began to spread out interstate. Starting from 1995, the competition began to be run by the Australian Rugby League. 1997, a proper national competition created by News Limited known as Super League was formed and run alongside the Australian Rugby League premiership, in which a number of teams defected to. Later that year, an agreement was made between the two parties following massive financial losses to merge into a new competition, known as the National Rugby League.

South Sydney, with 20 State titles, have been crowned New South Wales premiers more times than any other team. Fortitude Valley Diehards won the Queensland competition 24 times. They are followed by St. George with 15 premierships, including a record 11 New South Wales premierships in a row between 1956 and 1966. At the opposite end of the spectrum, the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks are yet to win a premiership after 44 seasons - longer than any other club in the history of the game (Parramatta's maiden premiership came in its 35th season in 1981).

1998-present - National Rugby League

The numbers in parentheses indicate the number of premierships won by a team, or the number of Grand Finals held at that venue.

¹ The Melbourne Storm were stripped of these titles due to gross long-term salary cap breaches.