| New South Wales Rugby League season 1993 |
|
| Teams |
16 |
| Premiers |
 Brisbane (2nd title) |
| Minor premiers |
 Canterbury (5th title) |
| Matches played |
182 |
| Points scored |
6173 (average 33.918 per match) |
| Attendance |
2,625,467 (average 14,426 per match) |
| Top points scorer(s) |
 Daryl Halligan (180) |
| Top try scorer(s) |
 Noa Nadruku (22) |
The 1993 New South Wales Rugby League premiership was the eighty-sixth season of professional rugby league football in Australia. Sixteen teams competed for the J J Giltinan Shield and the Winfield Cup during the season, which culminated in a replay of the previous year's grand final between the Brisbane Broncos and the St. George Dragons.
Season summary
This season the 10-metre rule was introduced, whereby the defensive team would be required to retreat 10 metres from where the ball is being played, allowing more room for attacking players. Twenty-two regular season rounds were played from March till August, resulting in a top five of Canterbury, St. George, Canberra, Manly and Brisbane who would go on to battle it out in the finals.
On August 22, the Canberra Raiders beat the Parramatta Eels 68-nil, at the time the third biggest winning margin for a club match in NSWRL history.
The Canberra Raiders' Ricky Stuart won both the Rothmans Medal and Dally M Medal as the best and fairest player in the League in 1993, while Steve Walters, also from the Raiders, was named Rugby League Week's player of the year.
Teams
The lineup of teams remained unchanged from the previous season, with sixteen clubs contesting the premiership, including five Sydney-based foundation teams, another six from Sydney, two from greater New South Wales, two from Queensland, and one from the Australian Capital Territory.
Advertising
For the second year running the NSWRL and its advertising agency Hertz Walpole used the 1992 re-recording of "The Best" by Tina Turner and Jimmy Barnes which had been released as "Simply The Best", the title by which the song was more popularly known in Australia.
No new Tina footage was available until she came to Australia at the season's end, so further shots were taken from the 1992 Tina and Jimmy black & white film clip that accompanied the song's release and used in amongst the usual previous season action and pre-season training images.
The League and Winfield enjoyed additional advertising exposure late in the season when Tina aligned an Australian leg of her 1993 tour with the NSWRL's final series. She performed on-stage at the Grand Final, presented the victor's trophy and performed the next week in a number of full-scale rock'n'roll shows with her band at the Sydney Entertainment Centre.
Ladder
- Balmain were stripped of 2 competition points due to an illegal replacement in one game.
Finals
There was only two points seperationg 1st and 5th. St. George beat Minor Premiers' Canterbury in the Semi Final then had a week off to prepare for a Grand Final rematch with Brisbane who beat Canberra in the Semi Final and Canterbury in the Preliminary Final.
Grand Final
For the second year running Brisbane and the St George played out the decider. The sides were largely unchanged between the two years. Only one Bronco (Peter Ryan) had not played in the 1992 grand final and four of the Dragons (Jason Stevens], Nathan Brown, Gorden Tallis and Phil Blake). It was also Glenn Lazarus' fifth consecutive Grand Final appearance, having appeared the previous year for Brisbane and for three years before that with Canberra.
In the pre-match performance, Tina Turner performed "The Best" on stage at the Sydney Football Stadium alongside her saxophonist, US session musician Timmy Cappello.
Brisbane withstood an early Dragons barrage which brought much hope but no points. Then, following a Tony Priddle error, the Broncos opened the scoring after Kevin Walters threw a dummy and sliced through the St. George line then passed back inside to Chris Johns who dived over. Terry Matterson then also crossed for a soft try from close range to give Brisbane a 10–2 half-time lead.
Ian Herron kept St. George in touch with three penalty goals to make it 10-6, but the title stayed north of the border when Willie Carne scored two minutes from full-time. Thus Brisbane became the first team in history to win a premiership from fifth spot with a 14-6 win. After the match Tina Turner presented the trophy to Allan Langer and joined in Brisbane's post-game victory song.
Brisbane 14 (Tries: Johns, Matterson, Carne. Goals: Matterson 1/3)
St. George 6 (Goals: Herron 3/3 )
Clive Churchill Medal: Brad Mackay (St. George)
References
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