By STEVE MASCORD
Two Tribes is intended as the sequel to Mike Colman’s peerless 1996 classic, Super League: The Inside Story.
In this indispensable tome, there’s a great story about Peter Morgan, the Canterbury fan from Sydney’s North Shore who moved to Adelaide and got a job with News Limited’s Advertiser.
Morgan took his passion for rugby league with him. He and Kevin Felgate, the former Illawarra player who I’ve had a fair bit to do with over the years, convinced the New South Wales Rugby League to bring St George v Balmain to Adelaide Oval on June 28, 1991.
In 1993, Morgan came up with the name Adelaide Aces – in a nod to the city’s casino which he thought might come on board as major sponsor – and registered the name.
He continued to write stories about the possibility of an Adelaide team – winning support in State parliament – and those efforts led to Super League jumping on board in 1995. The government granted land to the new team and Adelaide had delegates at the Los Angeles conference we’ve been posting about here the last few days.
The Adelaide Aces were go!
Morgan thought he might land a job at the new club, finally be a decision-maker and not just a reporter-of-decisions. He owned the name after all and he could not have worked any harder to bring the Greatest Game Of All to the City Of Churches.
I’ll let Mike Colman take up the story…
“Peter arrived at work to find Advertiser general manager John Sanders waiting at his desk. For years Morgan had waited for this moment. He knew the name Aces was firmly entrenched in the minds of the public and the Super League hierarchy. He knew they wanted it.
“But if Morgan was expecting a cordial discussion about the team and his part in its future, he was disappointed. If he expected an offer of tens of thousands of dollars to relinquish the name, he was doubly disappointed. The bidding started at $500 and didn’t rise a great deal higher. ‘I wasn’t out to make a high profit and walk away. I’d always wanted the game to come to South Australia and I wanted to be part of it when it did. I’d been involved with league in Adelaide from day one. I felt I knew what was needed to get the team up and running. Super League were appointing media people at all the other franchises. That was what I wanted’.
“Eventually Morgan signed over the name ‘Adelaide Aces’ for an amount which barely covered his costs. More important to him was the vague understanding he’d be considered for the media job. It was a job he never got. A marketing company employed to oversee the team’s rushed entry into Super League employed former television journalist Ric Keegan on a four-month contract to handle media liaison.”
And on this day 25 years ago, in-the-know Sun-Herald reporter Alex Mitchell reported that the team in Rupert Murdoch’s home town was happening. After what the Super League delegates saw at their Los Angeles symposium, they decided “Rams” was a better name. Peter’s disappointment that day at work had been for nought.
Mitchell reported each of the other Super League clubs would have to give up players for the new franchise. He also claimed St George had agreed to jump camps but then change their minds when News Limited insisted they merge or relocate.
Peter Morgan? Just another hard-working dreamer kicked to the curb by the game – and by big business.
