The South Queensland Crushers were an Australian rugby league football club based in Brisbane, Queensland. In 1992 it was decided that the team would be admitted into the New South Wales Rugby League competition, along with three other teams, as part of the League's expansion plans for professional rugby league in Australia. The competition was re-branded the Australia Rugby League competition in 1995, which was the Crushers' first season. The Crushers, whose whole existence was against the backdrop of the Super League war, were an unsuccessful club. They had to compete for support with the other Brisbane-based club, the Brisbane Broncos, who were already well-established. The Crushers only competed in the three seasons of the Australian Rugby League's premiership, winning the wooden spoon twice for being last in the competition. Despite the wealth of star players the Crushers managed to attract, they were financially unsustainable and competitively unsuccessful, which ultimately led to their demise at the end of 1997. History Formation The New South Wales Rugby League competition (NSWRL) had begun in 1908 as a rugby league competition in the Sydney region of Australia. For the next eighty years, the league would only feature clubs in the New South Wales region. But in 1988, the NSWRL admitted two Queensland based teams, one from Brisbane and the other from Gold Coast. The Brisbane club was the first NSWRL club to be privately owned and by 1992 had won their first premiership. On 30 November 1992, the NSWRL formally admitted a second Brisbane-based team into the competition, along with three others, from Townsville, Perth and New Zealand. The newly established Brisbane team was to be known as the South Queensland Crushers, and would enter the 1995 NSWRL competition, which had been renamed the Australian Rugby League competition (ARL). In September 1993, the Crushers chose Bill Gardner as the coach for the team, but after a poor off-season, he was replaced by former Australian international Bob Lindner. Darryl van der Velde, an experienced rugby league coach from England, was the club's inaugural chief executive. The club had chosen Lang Park as their home ground which had been abandoned by the Brisbane Broncos in favour of QE II Stadium in 1992. The Crushers were able to sign Queensland representative players Trevor Gillmeister, Mark Hohn and Dale Shearer, as well as three rugby union players including Garrick Morgan who had represented Australia in the fifteen-man