The League’s Monday Night Football experiment during the mid-1980s was regarded as a failure. Modest crowds struggled to fill the Sydney Cricket Ground’s expanses, while half-baked gimmicks were derided as an embarrassing attempt to Americanise the game.
The ARL brains trust of John Quayle and Ken Arthurson revived the concept a decade later, however – and it was arguably the high point of a 1996 season played in the foreboding shadows of the ongoing Super League war.
Heavyweights Sydney City Roosters and Brisbane Broncos delivered an absolute barnburner in front of 35,075 fans at the Sydney Football Stadium to kick off the seven-week experiment in Round 14.
The Roosters’ 12-10 victory is destined to remembered for one of the all-time costly gaffes from Broncos prop Andrew Gee. The thriller seems destined for a draw, until Gee was penalised for an incorrect 20-metre tap restart in the dying seconds. Ivan Cleary slotted the simple penalty attempt after the siren.
“It was disappointing after the boys put in such a great effort,” a crestfallen Gee said post-match. “We’re not blueing about the referee. It was a silly thing to do … I should have passed the ball to (hooker) Kerrod Walters.”
It was an agonising way to finish a dramatic, top-shelf contest.
Sizzling solo tries by Broncos tyros Darren Lockyer – who was laid low by the flu leading into the match – and Robbie Ross were cancelled out by sensational four-pointers to the Roosters’ rugby union convert wingers Peter Jorgensen and Darren Junee.
“It was a game where we wingers had to stand up and be counted,” Jorgensen beamed. “We had to do that because everyone else in the team was having a bash.”
Brisbane bounced back from that heartbreak seven days later, with Allan Langer engineering a 24-19 comeback victory over Newcastle after the Broncos trailed by 10 points during the second half.
A record-breaking non-finals SFS crowd of 37,981 saw Manly trounce Sydney City 34-6 in a top-of-the-table showdown in Round 16 – the only blowout – before four straight Monday matches were decided by two points or less.
Cronulla five-eighth Mitch Healey’s last-gasp field goal secured a 15-all draw at North Sydney Oval; the Sharks held on for a gritty 12-10 upset of the Sea Eagles; a contentious late penalty – coolly converted by winger Chris Lawler – gave resurgent Parramatta an 18-16 victory over Newcastle; and Western Suburbs pivot Andrew Willis’ famous 45-metre field goal on the cusp of fulltime sunk the Bears 23-22 at Campbelltown.
The Sharks carved out a third impressive result against a top-four opponent in Round 21, outlasting the Roosters 18-10 at the SFS to wrap up the rapturously received Monday night series.
The seven fixtures pulled average crowds of almost 28,000. The Roosters, Eels and Magpies drew their biggest home attendances of 1996 during the stretch, while the Broncos, Bears and Sharks all recorded their second-highest crowd figures of the season.
Ironically, the ARL abandoned Monday night matches in 1997 but they were a weekly feature of Super League’s sole season. The timeslot returned on a permanent basis for the 2007 NRL season and was retained until 2017, when it was replaced by Thursday night fixtures.
