This is the first NRL season that I've had a sky sports subscription.

I was enjoying recording the games and watching them at my leisure inbetween the live Super Legaue games.

With the NRL set to restart at the end of May and as yet no restart date for Super League, I was going to start following an NRL team.

Rather than pick one at random I was wondering if we had any sort of connection with an NRL side?

For example is there one team that has provided the most players to us?

Connections through players:

Bob Fulton, Les Boyd, Phil Blake, Michael Monaghan, Chris Hicks - Manly
Allan Langer, Darren Burns - Brisbane (I've been to Brisbane Broncos Leagues Club, they have a framed Wire jersey worn by Langer on their wall)
Andrew Johns, Kurt Gidley - Newcastle
Adrian Morley, Brian Bevan - Roosters (Bevan never played for their first team, we took him on trial when he was in their reserves)
Sid Domic, Trent Waterhouse - Penrith
Chris O'Sullivan, Joel Monaghan, Blake Austin - Canberra
Henry Fa'afili, Louis Anderson - NZ Warriors
Tawera Nikau, Matt King - Melbourne

From the perspective of the kit - Parramatta. I absolutely loved their 2001 kit which had a yellow V at the top of the shirt/shoulders on a blue base, with the same design but colours reversed for the away kit. Would have loved us to do a kit based on that. They had a great side that year too, and Brett Hodgson and David Solomona subsequently signed for us.

Or Warrington players going the other way:
Jonathan Davies - Canterbury
Mike Cooper - St George-Illawarra (a few other connections here: before the merger, Brian Johnson played for St George, Greg Mackey played for Illawarra, Tony Smith played for both Illawarra and St George; and after the merger Steve Price coached St George-Illawarra). The kit reminds me of Saints though.
Allan Bateman, Danny Nutley - Cronulla (Nutley joined us from South Queensland Crushers who don't exist any more)

The Eels for me every day of the week. Probably started for me in the eighties when I was a kid, they had Kenny, Sterling, Grothe and had the same colours. Then Hindmarsh, Hayne and I always enjoyed wathing Sandow. Had the pleasure of going to Pirtek in 2013 and watched Parra win and Fui Fui Moi Moi thrown a ball in Gallens face. Would love to go back and visit Bank West stadium. It looked brilliant sold out for the first game.
They have looked good recently especially with Mitchell Moses being coached by Johns.
Parra all the way.

Wow, thanks for that SC. Really interesting. Seeing who Bevan played for was my first port of call and like you say he only played reserves for Easts.

Brian played a few games for Eastern Suburbs first grade in 1942 after joining the club in 1941 and playing that season in 3rd and reserve grades in the centre. He then switched to the wing for 1942.

This is sourced from an official Biography by Andy Carr published online in 2014 from the Australian Dictionary of Biography at the Australian National University.

I first saw Brian play in Hull in season 1947/48 and he remains the best player I have ever seen.

I loved the South’s Smith’s Crisps shirt and that they had Phil Blake.
I liked the Cronulla System 2000 shirt too. Paul Bishop went there then.
And I always like the Canberra as I it has P&B flash to the green and white. Always felt we could use a Canberra shirt as a Wire alternative strip, and off course the worlds best Meninga was playing for them at that time. Pre Saints days.

I suppose Bevan was pretty much the epitome of the difference in standard of Aussie & UK clubs , couldn't get a 1st grade contract in Oz but came over here & became a perennial superstar. The very reason that now we are prepared to buy anyone from Down Under at top dollar wages.
My great regret is that i never saw him play.

Cronulla for me used to live there, brings back great memories of watching 3 games one after the other few beers at the game after in their leagues club, off to working man club 5 dollar eat as much as you like Chinese buffet then up to Carringbah Inn for music until you fell over. Always had a soft spot fro bunnies though sure there must have been other connections but Jason Clarke and Bryson Goodwin spring to mind.

During Bevan's career GB had a good record against the Aussies, won the Ashes series at home in 1949, 1952, 1956, 1959 and away in 1946, 1950, 1954, 1958.

I don't think you can infer much about the difference in standard between British and Aussie clubs from picking up a young Bevan from reserve grade any more than RU could claim that Martin Offiah was only good enough to be a lower division player with Rosslyn Park in their game.

Just as i said, Bevan was a virtual unknown who came here & became a superstar. Would RU still have been an amateur game when Offiah changed codes ?

RU was still amateur and Offiah was playing in the second division when he joined Widnes.

I just dug out Robert Gate's biography "The Great Bev" to check Bevan's career with Eastern Suburbs (the old name for the Sydney Roosters).

He made his reserve grade debut aged 16 then he played 7 first grade games in 1942 as an 18 year old (including the Grand Final which Easts lost to St George Dragons). He joined the Australian Navy and the second World War was going on which disrupted his RL career. In 1945 he was stationed in the UK and took a trial at Warrington, played one game for us (he was 21 by this point), then got decommissioned by the Navy, played one more first grade game for Easts and then came back to sign for Warrington.

I follow the Bunnies. Great club stooped in history and tradition. Huge fan of Burgess so followed them vigorously when he went over. Coached by Wayne Bennett now and have some really exciting players, Damien Cook, Adam Reynolds, Cameron Murray, James Roberts etc.

Lived near Cronulla( Kirrawee) from 1970- 2000 and supported them during that time going to almost every home game. The period of the 3 match games starting around 11am with the Under 23's followed by Reserve and First Grade was rugby league heaven for me.

Particularly so because in those early days the match of the week was played on Saturday at the SCG with all other fixtures being played on Sunday afternoon.Cronulla rarely featured there and as I went to the SCG matches it meant a possible 6 games in 2 days!

For the first year or so after arriving in Aus. I lived in the eastern suburbs and followed South Sydney who often featured in the Saturday SCG match.

Brian Bevan had trials with Leeds and (I think) Hunslet....He was turned down and came to Wire.

And the rest is history .

According to Gate's book Leeds and Hunslet didn't even trial him. Bevan had been playing some RU for his navy ship's team which was playing RU teams on the south coast but he wanted to try out as a professional in RL up north. His father was a friend of Bill Shankland, who had been an Aussie international winger who played for Wire in the 1930s. So his Dad set Bevan up to stay with Shankland up in Leeds where he was spending his RL retirement as the professional at a golf club. Shankland touted Bevan round Leeds and Hunslet but neither were interested in giving him a trial, so his third option was to call his old club, Warrington, who brought him over and gave him a run out in an 'A' team game.