Who were the worst NRL teams of all time?

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mozgrame

Engorged member
ALL teams go through rough patches.

All teams can struggle for a year here or there. Nobody’s perfect, especially in rugby league, and every club in the competition has experienced peaks and troughs.

But sometimes, teams transcend the rollercoaster nature of sport and enter the history books as being hopelessly futile to the point where their endless defeats become as compelling as a long winning streak.

There have been winless wonders and teams so bad they were kicked out of the competition, but of all the teams have put boot to ball since 1908, who were the very worst?

1966 Eastern Suburbs Roosters
The last team to go winless through the season, the 1966 Roosters copped some awful hidings in their depressing 18-match campaign.

Coached by Englishman Bert Holcroft (who retired with a record of three wins, 32 losses and one draw from 36 matches) the Tricolours stumbled to the worst season in club history, managing just 23 tries and only breaking double figures six times.

There were a couple of bright spots — Kevin Junee scored nine tries and was selected for New South Wales and future stalwart John Peard mad his debut — but the year was nothing short of an absolute disaster. In one of the great turnarounds in rugby league history, Jack Gibson took the reigns for season 1967 and managed to steer the club into the top four.

Future Test player John Peard had a rough introduction to first grade.

1999 Western Suburbs Magpies
The Magpies were saddled with some god-awful teams in their 91-year existence, but the final edition will always hold a special place in history.

In the black and whites last season as a stand-alone club, they leaked an incredible 944 points in 24 matches at an average of 39.33 per game, the most in league history.

For context, the second worst defensive team of all time were the 1982 Raiders, who conceded 862 points.

They won just three matches - by two, one and six points respectively - conceded 60 points or more a record five times and only managed to restrict their opposition to less than 24 points in five matches.

Injuries and poor results meant they churned through 38 players, the most notable of which were a very young Brett Hodgson, the McGuinness brothers, former Wallaby Andrew Leeds and tireless skipper Steve Georgallis.

By the time their wretched season ended after a 60-16 defeat to the Warriors at Campbelltown — which capped off a 12-match losing streak — it probably came as a relief to coach Tommy Raudonikis, who managed seven wins from his last 48 matches as Magpies coach.

1993 Gold Coast Seagulls
The original Gold Coast franchise never enjoyed great success — they only won more than 10 matches once in their 11-season history and never finished with a winning record — but their nadir was definitely the 1993 season that saw them claim just a single win from 22 outings.

There were elements of bad luck involved for the Seagulls as they lost 12 matches by 12 points or less, but the crux of the problem was their pathetic attack.

Their top tryscorer, future Origin representative Adrian Vowles, crossed the line just five times and their leading pointscorer, halfback Steve Weston, managed just 30 points. As a team they managed just 41 tries and didn’t score more than 24 points all season.

In an interesting twist of fate, their solitary win was a 22-6 defeat of Newcastle in a match that saw Andrew Johns make his first grade debut off the bench

1946 South Sydney Rabbitohs
Another team of winless wonders who failed to win a match from 14 attempts, the 1946 Rabbitohs play out like some sort of Greek tragedy.

Ageing club stalwart Arthur “Ash” Hennessy, who was Souths first captain, coach and club founder, as well as the first captain of NSW and Australia return as coach 28 seasons after leading the Rabbitohs to the 1918 title.


The most notable name on the team was Howard Hallett Jnr, who was an honest and skilful player but failed to live up to the legend of his more accomplished father.

There were a couple of stars in Jim Armstrong and Clem Kennedy, who both managed to play for NSW and Australia despite the club’s wretched form. Armstrong retired in 1947 to focus on wrestling and he won the bronze medal at heavyweight at the 1948 Olympics, while Kennedy — nicknamed “The Mighty Atom” weighed just 52 kilograms when he made his first grade debut.

As with many of the teams on the list, poor attack let them down — Hallett Jr topped the tryscoring lists with five and the point scoring list with 29.

1927-1937 Sydney University
By the time they were sent to the glue factory in 1937, University were mourned by few as they were without doubt the biggest battlers in Australian rugby league history.

The poor old Students struggled mightily in their final seasons in the big leagues, with their downfall beginning after they were runners up in 1926.

From 1927 to 1937, University won 24 matches, lost 126 and drew two. Twenty four wins in a decade.

These years of futility included four straight wooden spoons from 1929 to 1932, in which the Students never enjoyed for than two wins in a season.

However, things got even better/worse for University when they managed another quartet of last placed finishes from 1934 to 1937. In these four seasons, they managed two wins.

Two wins. In four seasons.

One win in 1934 and one win in 1936. That’s it. For four years.

From round two 1934 to round 14 1936 they lost 42 matches in a row, a full 17 more than the next best/worst (the Roosters dropped 25 matches on the trot from 1965-67).

Their final season in 1937 was an exercise in struggling, as Tom Carey and Hugh Campbell managed to jointly top the tryscoring lists for the club with two tries each.

Carey was also the club’s leading point scorer with 12 points.

That season there were only eight matches, but University managed to concede 309 points at an average of 38.6 per game.

Honourable Mentions:
*The long forgotten Annandale club experience more bad times than good in their 11 seasons and never won more than five games in a season, but their last four years were something special. The Dales played 55 matches for two wins and three draws from 1917 until their departure from the competition in 1920.

*Cumberland were part of the original premiership in 1908, but managed just one win from eight starts and ended the season in last place before they folded.

*South Sydney endured some lean winters when they first returned to the NRL in 2002, winning just 25 matches from 96 starts from 2002 to 2006.

*Parramatta had a mortgage on wooden spoons in the late 1950s and early 1960s as they came last eight times in 10 years from 1952 to 1961 and winning the spoon six times in a row from 1956 to 1961. In that span, they never won more than four matches in a season and from 1957 to 1961 they won just 12 matches.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sp...596008614?sv=83e5bfe7994cb01f75468ab110d643bf
 
University were an amateur club. They couldn't pay anybody a cent to turn out for them. Good players would always head elsewhere, and any 'student' that had any potential would be near impossible to retain. Hardly fair to place them amongst that list.
 
Another player from Eastern Suburbs, Peter Gallagher, who captained the year before that disastrous 1966 side (Easts also came last in 1965 with three wins) was nabbed by Manly and was a pretty handy centre forming a decent combination with Alec Tennant. At one stage in the first half of one year they scored 18 tries between them. He later moved to the wing when Frank Stanton moved to centre from half back. But in 1966 Gallagher joined Manly at the same time as a young bloke called Fulton took over as five eighth
 
Adelaide Rams

Even though I am from Adelaide and was a season ticket holder in 1997 (they didn't have to play Manly) I'll agree with you.....but consider this. The Adelaide Rams were actually sacrificed in order to keep Melbourne in the competition from 1999.

Still want to nominate the Rams? :p
 
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Even though I am from Adelaide and was a season ticket holder in 1997 (they didn't have to play Manly) I'll agree with you.....but consider this. The Adelaide Rams were actually sacrificed in order to keep Melbourne in the competition from 1999.

Still want to nominate the Rams? :p

I will still nominate the Rams because......40-0
 
I will still nominate the Rams because......40-0

Then blame the ARL. They were the ones who pushed to keep Melbourne at the expense of the Rams.

With a coach like Rod Reddy the Adelaide Rams were destined to fail lol. Seriously, he could coach the Kangaroos to a test series loss to the Cook Islands.
 
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How the Parramatta Eels do not top the list makes the whole article a farce.
Ditto, from my perspective the slugs have got to hold the title as the overall worst team in the history of the game, with the exception of the early to mid eighties they have been a rabble. Their management couldn't run a chook raffle and no matter who they buy and however much money they throw at overrated hacks they will struggle to come within a bull's roar of another title or even a semi finals spot IMO.
 
I think Melbourne really need a mention, for the prolonged and intentional cheating that their administrators, PLAYERS and COACH willingly took part in.
Don't you just love the way the whole salary cap thing went quiet after the initial exposure, I don't recall any info regarding taxation penalties dealt to the players in fact somehow they were made to look like victims, imagine if it had been the Eagles, we would have been tarred and feathered and run out of town, our players would have suffered the shame for the rest of their lives not just their careers. Ingliss, Slater, Smith, Cronk and the rest of the scum are lauded as heroes, it simply pisses me off !!!
 
Then blame the ARL. They were the ones who pushed to keep Melbourne at the expense of the Rams.

With a coach like Rod Reddy the Adelaide Rams were destined to fail lol. Seriously, he could coach the Kangaroos to a test series loss to the Cook Islands.
News Ltd owned the Rams (and the Perth Reds) and decided they didn't want to pump money into them anymore, considering they still had about 4 other SL teams on the books. The Rams demise has nothing to do with the ARL.
 

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