1987 Brisbane Rugby League season

Brisbane Rugby League

Sport	Rugby league
Number of teams	9
Country	Australia
Premiers	Past Brothers

The 1987 Brisbane Rugby League premiership was the 77th season of Brisbane's semi-professional rugby league football competition. Nine teams from across Brisbane competed for the premiership, which culminated in a grand final match between the Redcliffe and Past Brothers clubs.

Season summary

Teams played each other three times, with 24 rounds of competition played. It resulted in a top four of Past Brothers, Northern Suburbs, Redcliffe and Wynnum-Manly. The 1987 season is significant as most Rugby League historians view it as the final season of the BRL as a true top tier competition, as the entry of the Brisbane Broncos and Gold Coast Giants into the NSWRL Premiership in 1988 devastated the BRL by stripping it of mainstream media coverage and players. This led to lower attendance and television viewership, with the competition essentially becoming a second tier league, before it eventually merged with its companion statewide competition, the Winfield State League, to form the Queensland Cup in 1996 (A Brisbane finals series was still run for two more seasons, but the season was merged into the new competition). However, there is debate that the competition, although vastly inferior to the NSWRL from 1988-1994, maintained first-grade status until 1995, when the ARL Premiership was introduced.

Teams

Club	Home ground	Coach	Captain
Eastern Suburbs	Langlands Park
Fortitude Valley	Neumann Oval	Ross Strudwick
Northern Suburbs	Bishop Park
Past Brothers	Corbett Park
Redcliffe	Dolphin Oval
Southern Suburbs	Davies Park
Western Suburbs	Purtell Park
Wynnum-Manly	Kougari Oval	Wally Lewis	Wally Lewis
Ipswich	North Ipswich Reserve

Finals

Home	Score	Away	Match Information
			Date and Time	Venue	Referee	Crowd
Semi Finals
Redcliffe	30-7	Wynnum-Manly	30 August 1987	Lang Park	Eddie Ward	9,800
Past Brothers	25-16	Northern Suburbs	6 September 1987	Lang Park	Ian Irwin	7,500
Preliminary Final
Redcliffe	24-16	Northern Suburbs	13 September 1987	Lang Park	Eddie Ward	7,612
Grand Final
Past Brothers	26-8	Redcliffe	20 September 1987	Lang Park	Eddie Ward	25,000

Grand Final

Brothers	Position	Redcliffe
Clinton Mohr	FB	Greg Donnelly
Joe Kilroy	WG	Shane Knuth
Robert Grogan	CE	Rohan Teevan
Jeff Burns	CE	Steve Cherry
Mark Coyne	WG	Robin Thorne
Peter Gill	FE	Trevor Benson
Greg Smith	HB	Jamie Sandy
Brett Le Man	LK	Steve Bleakley (c)
Tony Rea	SR	Bob Keogh
Gary Smith	SR	Ashhley Tupea
Steve Carter	PR	Brian Niebling
Trevor Bailey (c)	HK	Greg Conescu
Jim Stafford	PR	Dave Brown
[[]]	Reserve	[[]]
[[]]	Reserve	[[]]
Ross Strudwick	Coach	Darryl Van De Velde

Brothers 26 (Try: T. Bailey, J. Kilroy, M. Coyne, T. Rea, C. Mohr. Goal: T. Rea. )

Redcliffe 8 (Tries: T. Sandy. Goals: R. Keogh 2.)