THE centenary of rugby league is obviously a fine time to look back but perhaps the enduring power of the game is proved by the fact that fans are doing it all the time, suggests Guy Hansen, curator of the League of Legends exhibition which opens today at the Powerhouse Museum.
Hansen knows from initially bitter and later exultant experience the power of football teams to define a moment: a moment that stays with fans, and no doubt players, forever.
"If you've been a fan, and you've seen your team win a grand final, I think that is a fairly pure moment and it leaves a lasting memory. And similarly, if you've seen your side defeated that will also leave a lasting impression," he said. "I have a very strong memory of watching the Parramatta team parade down Church St prior to the grand final they were expected to win in 1976. Of course, the following weekend they were defeated and that was a terrible moment for me as a 12-year-old. It teaches you lessons and the lesson it taught me is that failure is possible and great disappointment is possible. I think being a fan is a genuine character-building exercise."
The tears might be missing from the exhibition that celebrates 100 years of the game in Australia, but not a lot else.
There's the original competition trophy, the Royal Agricultural Society Shield, later given to Dally Messenger when Eastern Suburbs won in 1913, and 20 other trophies from different eras. Clive Churchill's shoulder pads are something to marvel at: so slight as to offer only minimal protection and so small you wonder how the player who wore them could have lasted so long.
While 2008 is a year to celebrate league's beginnings, Hansen believes the attractive power of the game in Sydney has been most strongly felt in the newer areas as they joined the premiership and battled to achieve glory.
"Perhaps not the whole population but a large percentage were very much invested in the team and that was particularly so in the newer areas," Hansen said. "You could see the community just explode with pride and everybody in that community would stand up straighter the following week. The same thing happened in Newcastle. You can be sceptical of a lot of the crass commercialism of rugby league or critical of the violence but when you see a whole community get behind its team, take pride in its achievements and the delight in the children's eyes I think you can say it's a good thing."
League has certainly been good to Graeme Langlands. A lifetime ago his direct connection to the game was, like thousands of others, through the radio and newspapers. As a teenager in Wollongong he knocked around with cousins of the mercurial Keith Barnes.
"We used to get up on the sun deck of the surf club and listen to the football when it came on with Frank Hyde calling the games," Langlands said. "Country football was pretty strong then. I didn't want to leave but, at the end of the day, I decided to turn around and give it a shot and that was it. Football's been good to me. I've seen pretty much half the world through rugby league: I wouldn't have been able to do it being a panel beater."
Hyde's card table, from which he called thousands of games, forms part of the exhibition, along with his binoculars and recordings of original calls. There's also an extensive photographic record of the game and film and television recordings.
Inevitably, for anyone who's loved the game, the memories will come back. And what was league's best time? Just like the defining memories of fans, Langlands reckons every player remembers their own moments of glory.
"If Dally Messenger was around today he'd say 'back when I played'. Obviously I'm going to say when we played was the best time for the game and the guys now, when they retire, are going to say when we played was the best," he said. "But it was definitely better in the '60s and '70s."
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