title: Southwestern United States

text: The fact that a majority of residents of Texas and Oklahoma—unlike those in other "southwestern" states—self-identify as living in the South and consider themselves southerners rather than the West and westerners—also lends to treating these two states as a somewhat distinct and separate entity in terms of regional classification.


title: Southwestern United States

text: Vegetation of the southwest generally includes various types of yucca, along with saguaro cactus, barrel cactus, prickly pear cactus, desert spoon, creosote bush, sagebrush, and greasewood. Although cacti are thought to only grow in Arizona and New Mexico, many native cacti grow throughout Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and west Texas. Steppe is also located all over the high plains areas in Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas. The mountains of the southwestern states have large tracts of alpine trees.


title: Southwestern United States

text: Landscape features of the core southwestern areas include mountains, canyons, mesas, buttes, high broad basins, plateaus, desert lands, and some plains, characteristic of the Basin and Range Province. The entire southwestern region features semi-arid to arid terrain. The far eastern part of southwestern Texas, for example, the Texas Hill Country, consists of dry, tall, and rugged rocky hills of limestone and granite. South Texas and the Rio Grande Valley is mostly flat with many places consisting of scrub and bare topsoil, much like the deserts further west.


title: Southwestern United States

text: The region has an extremely diverse bird population, with hundreds of species being found in the American Southwest. In the Chiricahua Mountains alone, in southeastern Arizona, there can be found more than 400 species. Species include Canadian ("Branta canadensis") and snow geese, sandhill cranes ("Grus canadensis"), and the roadrunner, the state bird of New Mexico and most famous bird in the region, is found in all states of the Southwest. Birds of prey include the red-tailed hawk ("Buteo jamaicensis"), Cooper's hawk ("Accipiter cooperii"), the osprey ("Pandion haliaetus"), golden eagles ("Aquila chrysaetos"), Harris's hawk ("Parabuteo unicinctus"), American kestrel ("Falco sparverius"), peregrine falcon ("Falco peregrinus"), the gray hawk ("Buteo plagiatus"), the barn owl ("Tyto alba"), the western screech owl ("Megascops kennicottii"), the great horned owl ("Bubo virginianus"), the elf owl ("Micrathene whitneyi"), and the burrowing owl ("Athene cunicularia")


title: Southwestern United States

text: Other bird species include the turkey vulture ("Cathartes aura"), the black vulture ("Coragyps atratus"), the northern cardinal ("Cardinalis cardinalis"), the blue grosbeak ("Passerina caerulea"), the house finch ("Haemorhous mexicanus"), the lesser goldfinch ("Spinus psaltria"), the broad-billed hummingbird ("Cynanthus latirostris"), the black-chinned hummingbird ("Archilochus alexandri"), Costa's hummingbird ("Calypte costae"), Gambel's quail ("Callipepla gambelii"), the common raven ("Corvus corax"), the Gila woodpecker ("Melanerpes uropygialis"), the gilded flicker ("Colaptes chrysoides"), the cactus wren ("Campylorhynchus brunneicapillus"), and the rock wren ("Salpinctes obsoletus"). Four types of doves call the Southwest home: the white-winged dove ("Zenaida asiatica"), the mourning dove ("Zenaida macroura"), the common ground dove ("Columbina passerina"), and the Inca dove ("Columbina inca").


title: Southwestern United States

text: Mammal species include the bobcat, coyote, black bear, black-tailed jackrabbit, desert cottontail, desert bighorn sheep, mule deer, white-tailed deer, gray fox, mountain lion, river otter, long-tailed weasel, western spotted skunk, pronghorn, raccoon, and Ord's kangaroo rat, all of which can be found in parts of every southwestern state. Elk are found in parts of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Arizona. White-nosed coati, coati, and collared peccaryor "javelina"in the Southwest are normally found in southern areas of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas near the Mexican border. Jaguars can be found in the bootheel region of Southwestern New Mexico. The Mexican wolf ("Canis lupus baileyi") was reintroduced to Arizona and New Mexico in 1998. A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service study reported a minimum population of 109 Mexican wolves in southwest New Mexico and southeast Arizona at the end of 2014.


title: Southwestern United States

text: There is a large contingent of snakes native to the region. Among them include the rosy boa ("Lichanura trivirgata"); several sub-species of the glossy snake ("Arizona elegans"); the Trans-Pecos ratsnake ("Bogertophis subocularis"); several sub-species of shovel-nosed snakes; several sub-species of kingsnake, including the desert kingsnake ("Lampropeltis getula splendida") and the Arizona mountain kingsnake ("Lampropeltis pyromelana"); the Arizona coral snake ("Micruroides euryxanthus"); the western diamondback rattlesnake ("Crotalus atrox"); the Trans-Pecos copperhead ("Agkistrodon contortrix pictigaster"); the Sonoran sidewinder ("Crotalus cerastes cercobombus"); the Arizona black rattlesnake ("Crotalus oreganus cerberus"); the western rattlesnake ("Crotalus viridis"); the Grand Canyon rattlesnake ("Crotalus oreganus abyssus"), found only in Arizona; several sub-species of the ridge-nosed rattlesnake ("Crotalus willardi"), the most recent rattlesnake species to be discovered in the United States, including the New Mexico ridge-nosed rattlesnake ("Crotalus willardi obscurus"), and the Arizona ridge-nosed rattlesnake, the state reptile of Arizona; and the desert massasauga ("Sistrurus catenatus edwardsii").


title: Southwestern United States

text: Other reptiles in the region include lizards and turtles. Lizards are highly represented in the region, the most distinctive denizen being the Gila monster, native only to the American Southwest and the state of Sonora in Mexico. The New Mexico whiptail is the state reptile of New Mexico. Other lizards include: Sonoran collared lizard ("Crotaphytus nebrius"); several types of geckos, including western banded gecko ("Coleonyx variegatus"), the common house gecko ("Hemidactylus frenatus"), and the Mediterranean house gecko ("Hemidactylus turcicus"), the last two species being non-native to the region but have been introduced; the desert iguana ("Dipsosaurus dorsalis"); the chuckwalla ("Sauromalus ater"); the greater earless lizard ("Cophosaurus texanus scitulus"); several sub-species of horned lizards ("Phrynosoma"); numerous species of spiny lizards ("Sceloporus"); Gilbert's skink ("Plestiodon gilberti"); the western skink ("Plestiodon skiltonianus"); Trans-Pecos striped whiptail ("Aspidoscelis inornata heptagrammus"); and the Arizona night lizard ("Xantusia arizonae"). Turtles are less numerous than their other reptilian counterparts, but several are found in the region, including: the western painted turtle ("Chrysemys picta bellii"); the Rio Grande cooter ("Pseudemys gorzugi"); the desert box turtle ("Terrapene ornata luteola"); the Big Bend slider ("Trachemys gaigeae gaigeae"); the Sonora mud turtle ("Kinosternon sonoriense"); and the desert tortoise ("Gopherus agassizii").


title: Southwestern United States

text: Amphibians include numerous toads and frogs in the American Southwest. Toads which can be found in the region include the Great Plains toad ("Anaxyrus cognatus"); the green toad ("Anaxyrus debilis"); the Arizona toad ("Anaxyrus microscaphus"); the New Mexico spadefoot ("Spea multiplicata stagnalis"); and the Colorado River toad ("Incilius alvarius"), also known as the Sonoran Desert toad. Frog representation includes: western barking frog ("Craugastor augusti"); the canyon tree frog ("Hyla arenicolor"); the Arizona treefrog ("Hyla wrightorum"); the western chorus frog ("Pseudacris triseriata"); Chiricahua leopard frog ("Lithobates chiricahuensis"); and the relict leopard frog ("Lithobates onca"). There are quite a few salamanders throughout the region, including: the Arizona tiger salamander ("Ambystoma mavortium nebulosum") and the painted ensatina ("Ensatina eschscholtzii picta").


title: Southwestern United States

text: Despite the Southwest being mostly arid, various fishes are found where water is available, including various species unique to the region. Apache trout and Gila trout are two salmonids endemic to the area, with the former found only in Arizona and the latter only in Arizona and New Mexico. Desert pupfishes are several closely related species of fish in the genus Cyprinodon, many of which are found in isolated spring-fed ponds hundreds of miles from each other, ranging from far West Texas to Death Valley in California. These pupfishes often thrive in water considerably higher in temperature and dissolved solids than most fish can tolerate. Many of these desert fish species are endangered due to their limited and tenuous habitat, as well as loss of habitat due to human consumption of groundwater and diversion of surface water, as well as the introduction of species such as sportfish for recreation (see: Rio Grande Silvery Minnow v. Bureau of Reclamation).


title: Southwestern United States

text: The southwestern United States features a semi-arid to arid climate, depending on the location. Much of the Southwest is an arid desert climate, but higher elevations in the mountains in each state, with the exception of West Texas, feature alpine climates with very large amounts of snow. The metropolitan areas of Phoenix, Tucson, Las Vegas, and El Paso hardly ever receive any snow at all, as they are strictly desert lands with mountains. Albuquerque receives less snow than other cities, but still receives significant snowfalls occasionally in the winter. Although it snows in this region, the snow in this part of the United States melts rapidly, often before nightfall. This is due mainly to the higher altitude and abundant sunshine in these states.


title: Southwestern United States

text: Nevada and Arizona are both generally arid with desert lands and mountains, and receive large amounts of snow in the higher elevations in and near the mountains. New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado are generally arid, with desert lands and mountains as well. They all receive decent amounts of snow and large amounts of snow in the high elevations in the mountains, although some areas in far southwestern and southern New Mexico do not receive much snow at all at lower elevations. West Texas is generally arid as well but does not receive the same amount of snow that the other southwestern states receive at their high elevations. The terrain of western Texas in the Southwest is the flat, rolling land of the plains, which eventually turns into a desert with some hills. There are significant mountains as well in west Texas upon reaching the Trans-Pecos area.


title: Southwestern United States

text: The desert lands found in Eastern Utah, Northern Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico are usually referred to as the high desert. Colorado has scattered desert lands found in southern, southwestern, western, and northwestern parts of the state. These scattered desert lands are located in and around areas such as, the Roan Plateau, Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado National Monument, Royal Gorge, Cortez, Dove Creek, Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, Four Corners Monument, Montrose, Blue Mesa Reservoir, Pueblo, San Luis Valley, Great Sand Dunes and Joshua Tree National Park. Besides the Chihuahuan Desert, lands in southwestern and southern New Mexico, they also have scattered desert lands in the northwestern and northern portions of their state, which is referred to as the high desert.


title: Southwestern United States

text: During El Niño, winters and springs are generally colder and wetter across southern portions of the region, while the northern portion stays warmer and drier due to a southern jet stream. Under La Niña, the opposite happens, meaning the cool and wet weather tends to stay farther north. The Southwest also experiences multi-year and multi-decade episodes of severe drought, including the ongoing southwestern North American megadrought which emerged starting year 2000.


title: Southwestern United States

text: The southwestern United States contains many well-known national parks including Grand Canyon in Arizona, Death Valley in California, Great Sand Dunes in Colorado, Arches in Utah, Big Bend in Texas, Great Basin in Nevada, and White Sands in New Mexico.


title: Southwestern United States

text: Arizona parks and monuments include Grand Canyon, Monument Valley (a Navajo Nation park), Petrified Forest, and Saguaro national parks; the national monuments of Agua Fria, Canyon de Chelly, Casa Grande Ruins, Chiricahua, Ironwood Forest, Montezuma Castle, Navajo, Organ Pipe Cactus, Pipe Spring, Sonoran Desert, Sunset Crater, Tonto, Tuzigoot, Vermilion Cliffs, Walnut Canyon, and Wupatki. Other federal areas include the Apache–Sitgreaves National Forests and Tumacacori National Historical Park.


title: Southwestern United States

text: Southern California parks and monuments include Death Valley and Joshua Tree national parks; the national monuments of Castle Mountains, Mojave Trails, Sand to Snow, and San Gabriel Mountains; and Mojave National Preserve.


title: Southwestern United States

text: Colorado parks and monuments include Great Sand Dunes, Black Canyon of the Gunnison, and Mesa Verde national parks; the national monuments of Browns Canyon, Canyons of the Ancients, Colorado, Hovenweep, and Yucca House. Other federal areas include Curecanti National Recreation Area and Bent's Old Fort National Historic Site; as well as the national forests of San Isabel, San Juan, and Uncompahgre.


title: Southwestern United States

text: Nevada has one national park at Great Basin, and the national monuments of Basin and Range, Gold Butte, and Tule Springs Fossil Beds. Other federal areas include Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, Lake Mead National Recreation Area, and Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area.


title: Southwestern United States

text: New Mexico has two national parks, at Carlsbad Caverns and White Sands. National monuments include Aztec Ruins, Bandelier, El Malpais, El Morro, Gila Cliff Dwellings, Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks, Organ Mountains–Desert Peaks, Petroglyph, Rio Grande del Norte, and Salinas Pueblo Missions. Other federal park areas include Chaco Culture National Historical Park, Pecos National Historical Park, Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge, and the national forests of Apache, Carson, Gila, Lincoln, and Santa Fe.


title: Southwestern United States

text: West Texas has two national parks, at Big Bend and Guadalupe Mountains. Other federal park areas include Chamizal National Memorial and Fort Davis National Historic Site.


title: Southwestern United States

text: Utah national parks include Arches, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, and Zion. National monuments include Bears Ears, Cedar Breaks, Grand Staircase–Escalante, Hovenweep (also in Colorado), Natural Bridges, and Rainbow Bridge. Other federal areas include Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, Dixie National Forest, and Manti–La Sal National Forest.


title: Southwestern United States

text: The Southwest is ethnically varied, with significant Anglo American and Hispanic American populations in addition to more regional African American, Asian American, and American Indian populations.


title: Southwestern United States

text: Hispanic Americans (mostly Mexican Americans, with large populations of Spanish Americans) can be found in large numbers in every major city in the Southwest such as El Paso (80%), San Antonio (63%), Los Angeles (48%), Albuquerque (47%), Phoenix (43%), Tucson (41%), Las Vegas (32%), and Mesa (27%).


title: Southwestern United States

text: Very large Hispanic American populations can also be found in the smaller cities such as Eagle Pass (96%), Las Cruces (56%), Yuma (55%), Blythe (53%), Pueblo (48%), Santa Fe (48%), and Glendale (36%). Many small towns throughout the southwestern states also have significantly large Latino populations.


title: Southwestern United States

text: The largest African American populations in the Southwest can be found in Las Vegas (10%), San Antonio (7%), and Phoenix (5%).


title: Southwestern United States

text: The largest Asian American populations in the southwest can be found in California and Texas, with some significant Asian population in Phoenix. The most significant American Indian populations can be found in New Mexico and Arizona.


title: Southwestern United States

text: The area also contains many of the nation's largest cities and metropolitan areas, despite relatively low population density in rural areas. Phoenix is the fifth most populous city in the country, and Albuquerque and Las Vegas were some of the fastest-growing cities in the United States. Also, the region as a whole has witnessed some of the highest population growth in the United States, and according to the US Census Bureau, in 2008–2009, Utah was the fastest-growing state in America. As of the 2010 Census, Nevada was the fastest-growing state in the United States, with an increase of 35.1% in the last ten years. Additionally, Arizona (24.6%), Utah (23.8%), Texas (20.6%), and Colorado (16.9%) were all in the top ten fastest-growing states as well.


title: Southwestern United States

text: The largest metropolitan areas are centered around Phoenix (with an estimated population of more than 5 million ), Las Vegas (more than 2.2 million), Tucson (more than 1 million), Albuquerque (more than 900,000), and El Paso (more than 840,000). Those five metropolitan areas have an estimated total population of more than 9.6 million , with nearly 60 percent of them living in the two Arizona cities—Phoenix and Tucson.


title: Southwestern United States

text: Of the four major professional sports, Phoenix and Las Vegas are the only metropolitan areas in the Southwest that have representatives. While Las Vegas is home to the Las Vegas Raiders NFL football team and the Vegas Golden Knights NHL hockey team, Phoenix is one of only 13 U.S. cities to have representatives in all four: Arizona Diamondbacks in Major League Baseball, Arizona Cardinals in the National Football League, the Phoenix Suns in the National Basketball Association, and the Arizona Coyotes in the National Hockey League. The Greater Phoenix area is home to the Cactus League, one of two spring training leagues for Major League Baseball; fifteen of MLB's thirty teams are now included in the Cactus League. The region has also been the scene of several NFL super bowls. Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe held Super Bowl XXX in 1996, when the Dallas Cowboys defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers. State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona hosted Super Bowl XLII on February 3, 2008, in which the New York Giants defeated the New England Patriots, as well as Super Bowl XLIX, which resulted in the New England Patriots defeating the Seattle Seahawks 28–24. The U.S. Airways Center hosted both the 1995 and the 2009 NBA All-Star Games.


title: Southwestern United States

text: In 1997, the Phoenix Mercury were one of the original eight teams to launch the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA). Indoor American football is represented by the Arizona Rattlers located in Phoenix. The region is also host to several major professional golf events: the LPGA's Founder's Cup; the Phoenix Open and the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open (in Las Vegas) of the PGA; and the Tucson Conquistadores Classic (in Tucson), and the Charles Schwab Cup Championship (in Scottsdale) on the Champions Tour of the PGA.


title: Southwestern United States

text: NASCAR has two venues within the region: The Phoenix International Raceway, was built in 1964 with a one-mile oval, with a one-of-a-kind design, as well as a 2.5-mile road course, and the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, a 1,200-acre (490 ha) complex of multiple tracks for motorsports racing. There are several nationally recognized running events in the region, including The Phoenix Marathon, a qualifier for the Boston Marathon, and the Rock 'n' Roll Marathon Series in both Phoenix and Las Vegas. Las Vegas is also the end point for the annual Baker to Vegas Challenge Cup Relay, a 120-mile-long foot race by law enforcement teams from around the world, which is the largest law enforcement athletic event in the world. Las Vegas is the premier boxing venue in the country, and is also known for mixed martial arts events.


title: Southwestern United States

text: The Southwest is also home to some of the most prominent rodeos in North America. The Professional Bull Riders association has its headquarters in Pueblo, Colorado. The PBR World Finals are held annually in Las Vegas, which also hosts the National Finals Rodeo, which is the nation's premier rodeo event. Other major rodeo events include the week-long Fiesta de los Vaqueros in Tucson, the World's Oldest Rodeo in Prescott, Arizona, the Southwestern International PRCA Rodeo in El Paso, Texas, and the Rodeo de Santa Fe, one of the nation's premier rodeos.


title: Southwestern United States

text: Since the 1950s, Las Vegas has been host to many of professional boxing's largest events, beginning with the Heavyweight non-title bout in 1955 between world light heavyweight champion Archie Moore and perennial contender Niño Valdés. Muhammad Ali fought his last world title bout in Las Vegas against Larry Holmes in 1980, and Floyd Mayweather fought many of his major fights there.


title: Southwestern United States

text: The Southwest is home to a rich tradition of college sports. The Pac-12 Conference has two teams in the region, the Arizona State Sun Devils and the University of Arizona Wildcats. The Mountain West Conference also has two teams, the UNLV Rebels and the University of New Mexico Lobos. Conference USA is represented by the University of Texas at El Paso Miners. The Big Sky Conference has two teams: the Lumberjacks of Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona, and the Southern Utah University Thunderbirds in Cedar City, Utah. The Western Athletic Conference also has two representatives, the New Mexico State University Aggies in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and the Grand Canyon University Antelopes in Phoenix.


title: Southwestern United States

text: Las Vegas is becoming the nexus for NCAA league basketball tournaments. The Mountain West Conference, the Western Athletic Conference, the West Coast Conference, and the Pac-12 Conference all hold their conference basketball tournaments in Las Vegas.


title: Southwestern United States

text: The Southwest is the site of six college football bowl games: the TicketCity Cactus Bowl, formerly known as the Insight Bowl, in Tempe; the Arizona Bowl in Tucson; the Fiesta Bowl, played at the University of Phoenix Stadium; the Las Vegas Bowl; the New Mexico Bowl in Albuquerque; and the Sun Bowl in El Paso, Texas.


title: Southwestern United States

text: The erstwhile [20th century] Southwest Conference might seem to have been named after this region, but it had no teams from Arizona nor New Mexico. All but one of its teams were from schools in Texas.


title: Qualitative research

text: Qualitative research is a type of research that aims to gather and analyse non-numerical (descriptive) data in order to gain an understanding of individuals' social reality, including understanding their attitudes, beliefs, and motivation. This type of research typically involves in-depth interviews, focus groups, or observations in order to collect data that is rich in detail and context. Qualitative research is often used to explore complex phenomena or to gain insight into people's experiences and perspectives on a particular topic. It is particularly useful when researchers want to understand the meaning that people attach to their experiences or when they want to uncover the underlying reasons for people's behavior. Qualitative methods include ethnography, grounded theory, discourse analysis, and interpretative phenomenological analysis. Qualitative research methods have been used in sociology, anthropology, political science, psychology, social work, folklore, educational research and software engineering research.


title: Qualitative research

text: Qualitative research has been informed by several strands of philosophical thought and examines aspects of human life, including culture, expression, beliefs, morality, life stress, and imagination. Contemporary qualitative research has been influenced by a number of branches of philosophy, for example, positivism, postpositivism, critical theory, and constructivism.


title: Qualitative research

text: The historical transitions or ‘moments’ in qualitative research, together with the notion of ‘paradigms’ (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005), have received widespread popularity over the past decades. However, some scholars have argued that the adoptions of paradigms may be counterproductive and lead to less philosophically engaged communities. In this regard, Pernecky proposed an alternative way to implementing philosophical concerns in qualitative inquiry so that researchers are able to maintain the needed intellectual mobility and elasticity.


title: Qualitative research

text: The use of nonquantitative material as empirical data has been growing in many areas of the social sciences, including learning sciences, development psychology and cultural psychology. Several philosophical and psychological traditions have influenced investigators' approaches to qualitative research, including phenomenology, social constructionism, symbolic interactionism, and positivism.


title: Qualitative research

text: Phenomenology refers to the philosophical study of the structure of an individual's consciousness and general subjective experience. Approaches to qualitative research based on constructionism, such as grounded theory, pay attention to how the subjectivity of both the researcher and the study participants can affect the theory that develops out of the research. The symbolic interactionist approach to qualitative research examines how individuals and groups develop an understanding of the world. Traditional positivist approaches to qualitative research seek a more objective understanding of the social world. Qualitative researchers have also been influenced by the sociology of knowledge and the work of Alfred Schütz, Peter L. Berger, Thomas Luckmann, and Harold Garfinkel.


title: Qualitative research

text: More recent philosophical contributions to qualitative inquiry (Pernecky, 2016 ) have covered topics such as scepticism, idea-ism, idealism, hermeneutics, empiricism and rationalism, and introduced the qualitative community to a variety of realist approaches that are available within the wide philosophical spectrum of qualitative thought. Pernecky also deals with some of the neglected domains in qualitative research, such as social ontology, and ventures into new territories (e.g., quantum mechanics) in order to stimulate a more contemporary debate about common qualitative problems, such as absolutism and universalism.


title: Qualitative research

text: Qualitative researchers use different sources of data to understand the topic they are studying. These data sources include interview transcripts, videos of social interactions, notes, verbal reports and artifacts such as books or works of art. The case study method exemplifies qualitative researchers' preference for depth, detail, and context. Data triangulation is also a strategy used in qualitative research. Autoethnography, the study of self, is a qualitative research method in which the researcher uses his or her personal experience to understand an issue.


title: Qualitative research

text: Grounded theory is an inductive type of research, based on ("grounded" in) a very close look at the empirical observations a study yields. Thematic analysis involves analyzing patterns of meaning. Conversation analysis is primarily used to analyze spoken conversations. Biographical research is concerned with the reconstruction of life histories, based on biographical narratives and documents. Narrative inquiry studies the narratives that people use to describe their experience.


title: Qualitative research

text: Qualitative researchers may gather information through observations, note-taking, interviews, focus groups (group interviews), documents, and artifacts.


title: Qualitative research

text: In participant observation ethnographers get to understand a culture by directly participating in the activities of the culture they study. Participant observation extends further than ethnography and into other fields, including psychology. For example, by training to be an EMT and becoming a participant observer in the lives of EMTs, Palmer studied how EMTs cope with the stress associated with some of the gruesome emergencies they deal with.


title: Qualitative research

text: In qualitative research, the idea of recursivity refers to the emergent nature of research design. In contrast to standardized research methods, recursivity embodies the idea that the qualitative researcher can change a study's design during the data collection phase.


title: Qualitative research

text: Recursivity in qualitative research procedures contrasts to the methods used by scientists who conduct experiments. From the perspective of the scientist, data collection, data analysis, discussion of the data in the context of the research literature, and drawing conclusions should be each undertaken once (or at most a small number of times). In qualitative research however, data are collected repeatedly until one or more specific stopping conditions are met, reflecting a nonstatic attitude to the planning and design of research activities. An example of this dynamism might be when the qualitative researcher unexpectedly changes their research focus or design midway through a study, based on their first interim data analysis. The researcher can even make further unplanned changes based on another interim data analysis. Such an approach would not be permitted in an experiment. Qualitative researchers would argue that recursivity in developing the relevant evidence enables the researcher to be more open to unexpected results and emerging new constructs.


title: Qualitative research

text: In general, coding refers to the act of associating meaningful ideas with the data of interest. In the context of qualitative research, interpretative aspects of the coding process are often explicitly recognized, and articulated; coding helps to produce specific words or short phrases believed to be useful abstractions from the data.


title: Qualitative research

text: Data may be sorted into patterns for thematic analyses as the primary basis for organizing and reporting the study findings.


title: Qualitative research

text: According to Krippendorf, "[c]ontent analysis is a research technique for making replicable and valid inference from data to their context" (p. 21). It is applied to documents and written and oral communication. Content analysis is an important building block in the conceptual analysis of qualitative data. It is frequently used in sociology. For example content analysis has been applied to research on such diverse aspects of human life as changes in perceptions of race over time and the lifestyles of contractors.


title: Qualitative research

text: Contemporary qualitative data analyses can be supported by computer programs (termed computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software). These programs have been employed with "or" without detailed hand coding or labeling. Such programs do not supplant the interpretive nature of coding. The programs are aimed at enhancing analysts' efficiency at applying, retrieving, and storing the codes generated from reading the data. Many programs enhance efficiency in editing and revising codes, which allow for more effective work sharing, peer review, data examination, and analysis of large datasets.


title: Qualitative research

text: A criticism of quantitative coding approaches is that such coding sorts qualitative data into predefined (nomothetic) categories that are reflective of the categories found in objective science. The variety, richness, and individual characteristics of the qualitative data are reduced or, even, lost.


title: Qualitative research

text: To defend against the criticism that qualitative approaches to data are too subjective, qualitative researchers assert that by clearly articulating their definitions of the codes they use and linking those codes to the underlying data, they preserve some of the richness that might be lost if the results of their research boiled down to a list of predefined categories. Qualitative researchers also assert that their procedures are repeatable, which is an idea that is valued by quantitatively oriented researchers.


title: Qualitative research

text: Sometimes researchers rely on computers and their software to scan and reduce large amounts of qualitative data. At their most basic level, numerical coding schemes rely on counting words and phrases within a dataset; other techniques involve the analysis of phrases and exchanges in analyses of conversations. A computerized approach to data analysis can be used to aid content analysis, especially when there is a large corpus to unpack.


title: Qualitative research

text: A central issue in qualitative research is trustworthiness (also known as credibility or, in quantitative studies, validity). There are many ways of establishing trustworthiness, including member check, interviewer corroboration, peer debriefing, prolonged engagement, negative case analysis, auditability, confirmability, bracketing, and balance. Data triangulation and eliciting examples of interviewee accounts are two of the most commonly used methods of establishing the trustworthiness of qualitative studies.


title: Qualitative research

text: Qualitative research is not without limitations. These limitations include participant reactivity, the potential for a qualitative investigator to over-identify with one or more study participants, "the impracticality of the Glaser-Strauss idea that hypotheses arise from data unsullied by prior expectations," the inadequacy of qualitative research for testing cause-effect hypotheses, and the Baconian character of qualitative research. Participant reactivity refers to the fact that people often behave differently when they know they are being observed. Over-identifying with participants refers to a sympathetic investigator studying a group of people and ascribing, more than is warranted, a virtue or some other characteristic to one or more participants. Compared to qualitative research, experimental research and certain types of nonexperimental research (e.g., prospective studies), although not perfect, are better means for drawing cause-effect conclusions.


title: Qualitative research

text: Glaser and Strauss, influential members of the qualitative research community, pioneered the idea that theoretically important categories and hypotheses can emerge "naturally" from the observations a qualitative researcher collects, provided that the researcher is not guided by preconceptions. The ethologist David Katz wrote "a hungry animal divides the environment into edible and inedible things...Generally speaking, objects change...according to the needs of the animal." Karl Popper carrying forward Katz's point wrote that "objects can be classified and can become similar or dissimilar, only in this way--by being related to needs and interests. This rule applied not only to animals but also to scientists." Popper made clear that observation is always selective, based on past research and the investigators' goals and motives and that preconceptionless research is impossible.


title: Qualitative research

text: The Baconian character of qualitative research refers to the idea that a qualitative researcher can collect enough observations such that categories and hypotheses will emerge from the data. Glaser and Strauss developed the idea of theoretical sampling by way of collecting observations until "theoretical saturation" is obtained and no additional observations are required to understand the character of the individuals under study. Bertrand Russell suggested that there can be no orderly arrangement of observations such that a hypothesis will jump out of those ordered observations; some provisional hypothesis usually guides the collection of observations.


title: Qualitative research

text: Autobiographical narrative research has been conducted in the field of community psychology. A selection of autobiographical narratives of community psychologists can be found in the book "Six Community Psychologists Tell Their Stories: History, Contexts, and Narrative".


title: Qualitative research

text: Edwin Farrell used qualitative methods to understand the social reality of at-risk high school students. Later he used similar methods to understand the reality of successful high school students who came from the same neighborhoods as the at-risk students he wrote about in his previously mentioned book.


title: Qualitative research

text: In the field of health psychology, qualitative methods have become increasingly employed in research on understanding health and illness and how health and illness are socially constructed in everyday life. Since then, a broad range of qualitative methods have been adopted by health psychologists, including discourse analysis, thematic analysis, narrative analysis, and interpretative phenomenological analysis. In 2015, the journal "Health Psychology" published a special issue on qualitative research.


title: Qualitative research

text: According to Doldor and colleagues organizational psychologists extensively use qualitative research "during the design and implementation of activities like organizational change, training needs analyses, strategic reviews, and employee development plans."


title: Qualitative research

text: Although research in the field of occupational health psychology (OHP) has predominantly been quantitatively oriented, some OHP researchers have employed qualitative methods. Qualitative research efforts, if directed properly, can provide advantages for quantitatively oriented OHP researchers. These advantages include help with (1) theory and hypothesis development, (2) item creation for surveys and interviews, (3) the discovery of stressors and coping strategies not previously identified, (4) interpreting difficult-to-interpret quantitative findings, (5) understanding why some stress-reduction interventions fail and others succeed, and (6) providing rich descriptions of the lived lives of people at work. Some OHP investigators have united qualitative and quantitative methods within a single study (e.g., Elfering et al., [2005]); these investigators have used qualitative methods to assess job stressors that are difficult to ascertain using standard measures and well validated standardized instruments to assess coping behaviors and dependent variables such as mood.


title: Qualitative research

text: Since the advent of social media in the early 2000s, formerly private accounts of personal experiences have become widely shared with the public by millions of people around the world. Disclosures are often made openly, which has contributed to social media's key role in movements like the #metoo movement.


title: Qualitative research

text: The abundance of self-disclosure on social media has presented a unprecedented opportunity for qualitative and mixed methods researchers; mental health problems can now be investigated qualitatively more widely, at a lower cost, and with no intervention by the researchers. To take advantage of these data, researchers need to have mastered the tools for conducting qualitative research.


title: Early Modern English

text: Early Modern English or Early New English (sometimes abbreviated EModE, EMnE, or ENE) is the stage of the English language from the beginning of the Tudor period to the English Interregnum and Restoration, or from the transition from Middle English, in the late 15th century, to the transition to Modern English, in the mid-to-late 17th century.


title: Early Modern English

text: Before and after the accession of James I to the English throne in 1603, the emerging English standard began to influence the spoken and written Middle Scots of Scotland.


title: Early Modern English

text: The grammatical and orthographical conventions of literary English in the late 16th century and the 17th century are still very influential on modern Standard English. Most modern readers of English can understand texts written in the late phase of Early Modern English, such as the "King James Bible" and the works of William Shakespeare, and they have greatly influenced Modern English.


title: Early Modern English

text: Texts from the earlier phase of Early Modern English, such as the late-15th-century "Le Morte d'Arthur" (1485) and the mid-16th-century "Gorboduc" (1561), may present more difficulties but are still closer to Modern English grammar, lexicon and phonology than are 14th-century Middle English texts, such as the works of Geoffrey Chaucer.


title: Early Modern English

text: The change from Middle English to Early Modern English was not just a matter of changes of vocabulary or pronunciation; a new era in the history of English was beginning.


title: Early Modern English

text: An era of linguistic change in a language with large variations in dialect was replaced by a new era of a more standardised language, with a richer lexicon and an established (and lasting) literature.


title: Early Modern English

text: The English Civil War and the Interregnum were times of social and political upheaval and instability.


title: Early Modern English

text: The dates for Restoration literature are a matter of convention and differ markedly from genre to genre. In drama, the "Restoration" may last until 1700, but in poetry, it may last only until 1666, the "annus mirabilis" (year of wonders), and in prose lasts until 1688. With the increasing tensions over succession and the corresponding rise in journalism and periodicals, or until possibly 1700, when those periodicals grew more stabilised.


title: Early Modern English

text: The 17th-century port towns and their forms of speech gain influence over the old county towns. From around the 1690s onwards, England experienced a new period of internal peace and relative stability, which encouraged the arts including literature.


title: Early Modern English

text: Modern English can be taken to have emerged fully by the beginning of the Georgian era in 1714, but English orthography remained somewhat fluid until the publication of Johnson's "A Dictionary of the English Language", in 1755.


title: Early Modern English

text: The towering importance of William Shakespeare over the other Elizabethan authors was the result of his reception during the 17th and the 18th centuries, which directly contributes to the development of Standard English. Shakespeare's plays are therefore still familiar and comprehensible 400 years after they were written, but the works of Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland, which had been written only 200 years earlier, are considerably more difficult for the average modern reader.


title: Early Modern English

text: The orthography of Early Modern English was fairly similar to that of today, but spelling was unstable. Early Modern English, as well as Modern English, inherited orthographical conventions predating the Great Vowel Shift.


title: Early Modern English

text: Early Modern English spelling was similar to Middle English orthography. Certain changes were made, however, sometimes for reasons of etymology (as with the silent that was added to words like , and ).


title: Early Modern English

text: Many spellings had still not been standardised, however. For example, "he" was spelled as both and in the same sentence in Shakespeare's plays and elsewhere.


title: Early Modern English

text: Most consonant sounds of Early Modern English have survived into present-day English; however, there are still a few notable differences in pronunciation:


title: Early Modern English

text: The following information primarily comes from studies of the Great Vowel Shift; see the related chart.


title: Early Modern English

text: The difference between the transcription of the EME diphthong offsets with as opposed to the modern English transcription with is not meaningful in any way. The precise EME realizations are not known and they vary even in modern English.


title: Early Modern English

text: The "r" sound (the phoneme ) was probably always pronounced with following vowel sounds (more in the style of today's General American, West Country English, Irish accents and Scottish accents; although in the case of the Scottish accent the R is rolled, and less like the pronunciation now usual in most of England.


title: Early Modern English

text: Furthermore, at the beginning of the Early Modern English period there were three non-open non-schwa short vowels before in the syllable coda: , and (roughly equivalent to modern , and ; had not yet developed). In London English they gradually merged into a phoneme that became modern . By the time of Shakespeare, the spellings , and perhaps when they had a short vowel, as in "clerk", "earth", or "divert", had an "a"-like quality, perhaps about or . With the spelling , the sound may have been backed, more toward in words like "worth" and "word".


title: Early Modern English

text: In some pronunciations, words like "fair" and "fear", with the spellings and , rhymed with each other, and words with the spelling , such as "prepare" and "compare", were sometimes pronounced with a more open vowel sound, like the verbs "are" and "scar". See for more information.


title: Early Modern English

text: "Nature" was pronounced approximately as and may have rhymed with "letter" or, early on, even "latter". "One" may have been pronounced "own", with both "one" and "other" using the era's long vowel, rather than today's vowels. "Tongue" derived from the sound of "tong" and rhymed with "song".


title: Early Modern English

text: Early Modern English had two second-person personal pronouns: "thou", the informal singular pronoun, and "ye", the plural (both formal and informal) pronoun and the formal singular pronoun.


title: Early Modern English

text: "Thou" and "ye" were both common in the early 16th century (they can be seen, for example, in the disputes over Tyndale's translation of the Bible in the 1520s and the 1530s) but by 1650, "thou" seems old-fashioned or literary. It has effectively completely disappeared from Modern Standard English.


title: Early Modern English

text: The translators of the "King James Version" of the Bible (begun 1604 and published 1611, while Shakespeare was at the height of his popularity) had a particular reason for keeping the informal "thou/thee/thy/thine" forms that were slowly beginning to fall out of spoken use, as it enabled them to match the Hebrew and Ancient Greek distinction between second person singular ("thou") and plural ("ye"). It was not to denote reverence (in the "King James Version", God addresses individual people and even Satan as "thou") but only to denote the singular. Over the centuries, however, the very fact that "thou" was dropping out of normal use gave it a special aura and so it gradually and ironically came to be used to express reverence in hymns and in prayers.


title: Early Modern English

text: Like other personal pronouns, "thou" and "ye" have different forms dependent on their grammatical case; specifically, the objective form of "thou" is "thee", its possessive forms are "thy" and "thine", and its reflexive or emphatic form is "thyself".


title: Early Modern English

text: The objective form of "ye" was "you", its possessive forms are "your" and "yours" and its reflexive or emphatic forms are "yourself" and "yourselves".


title: Early Modern English

text: The older forms "mine" and "thine" had become "my" and "thy" before words beginning with a consonant other than "h", and "mine" and "thine" were retained before words beginning with a vowel or an "h", as in "mine eyes" or "thine hand".


title: Early Modern English

text: During the Early Modern period, the verb inflections became simplified as they evolved towards their modern forms:


title: Early Modern English

text: The modal auxiliaries cemented their distinctive syntactical characteristics during the Early Modern period. Thus, the use of modals without an infinitive became rare (as in "I must to Coventry"; "I'll none of that"). The use of modals' present participles to indicate aspect (as in "Maeyinge suffer no more the loue & deathe of Aurelio" from 1556), and of their preterite forms to indicate tense (as in "he follow'd Horace so very close, that of necessity he must fall with him") also became uncommon.


title: Early Modern English

text: Some verbs ceased to function as modals during the Early Modern period. The present form of "must", "mot", became obsolete. "Dare" also lost the syntactical characteristics of a modal auxiliary and evolved a new past form ("dared"), distinct from the modal "durst".


title: Early Modern English

text: The perfect of the verbs had not yet been standardised to use only the auxiliary verb "to have". Some took as their auxiliary verb "to be", such as this example from the "King James Version": "But which of you... will say unto him... when he is come from the field, Go and sit down..." [Luke XVII:7]. The rules for the auxiliaries for different verbs were similar to those that are still observed in German and French (see unaccusative verb).


title: Early Modern English

text: The modern syntax used for the progressive aspect ("I am walking") became dominant by the end of the Early Modern period, but other forms were also common such as the prefix "a-" ("I am a-walking") and the infinitive paired with "do" ("I do walk"). Moreover, the "to be" + -"ing" verb form could be used to express a passive meaning without any additional markers: "The house is building" could mean "The house is being built".


title: Early Modern English

text: The use of the verb "to suffer" in the sense of "to allow" survived into Early Modern English, as in the phrase "suffer the little children" of the "King James Version", but it has mostly been lost in Modern English. This use still exists in the idiom "to suffer fools gladly".


title: Early Modern English

text: Also, this period reveals a curious case of one of the earliest Russian borrowings to English (which is historically a rare occasion itself); at least as early as 1600, the word "steppe" (rus. степь) first appeared in English in William Shakespeare's comedy "A Midsummer Night's Dream". It is believed that this is a possible indirect borrowing via either German or French.


title: Early Modern English

text: The substantial borrowing of Latin and sometimes Greek words for abstract concepts, begun in Middle English, continued unabated, often terms for abstract concepts not available in English.


title: National Rugby League

text: The National Rugby League (NRL) is an Australasian rugby league club competition which contains clubs from New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory and New Zealand. The NRL formed in 1998 as a joint partnership between the Australian Rugby League (ARL) and media giant News Corporation-controlled Super League, in the aftermath of the 1990s Super League war, in which both ran parallel to each other in 1997. The partnership was dissolved in 2012, with control of the NRL going to the re-constituted ARL, which was re-structured with an independent board of directors and renamed the Australian Rugby League Commission.


title: National Rugby League

text: NRL matches are played in Australia and New Zealand from March to October. Each team plays 24 matches, with the highest placed team at the end of the regular season awarded the minor premiership. This is followed by a finals series contested between the eight highest placed teams from the regular season. The season culminates in the premiership-deciding NRL Grand Final, one of Australia's most popular sporting events. The winners play the World Club Challenge against the champions of the Super League. The reigning premiers are the Penrith Panthers, having won their fourth premiership at the end of the 2022 season.


title: National Rugby League

text: The New South Wales Rugby League ran the major rugby league competition of New South Wales from its inception in 1908 until 1994. Following the introduction of a new format for interstate rugby league, the State of Origin series in 1980, the decade of the 1980s brought about expansion of the NSWRL premiership, with the introduction of commercial sponsorship, the Winfield Cup, and the addition of non-Sydney-based teams, Canberra and Illawarra in 1982. Although this move brought more interest in the competition statewide in New South Wales, it would spell the beginning of the demise of some of the traditional Sydney-based clubs as well as having a negative effect on the Brisbane Rugby League premiership. Following the 1983 season, Sydney foundation club Newtown Jets were ultimately forced to withdraw from the competition because of financial difficulties.


title: National Rugby League

text: Further expansion of the league followed in 1988, with another three teams based outside Sydney introduced to the competition; the Newcastle Knights and the first two Queensland teams, the Brisbane Broncos and Gold Coast-Tweed Giants. The Brisbane and Newcastle sides proved to be successful and popular and paved the way towards a push for a truly national competition.


title: National Rugby League

text: Although a top-flight league, legally parallel to the NSWRL Premiership until the beginning of the truly national ARL Premiership in 1995, the Brisbane Rugby League's history is not officially recorded by the NRL, and it is considered to have been an equal but unrelated first grade competition from 1922-1994.


title: National Rugby League

text: This was attempted in 1995 with control of the premiership passing from the NSWRFL to the Australian Rugby League (ARL), who invited four more teams from outside NSW to participate in 1995. Ultimately this competition failed, but in its demise the National Rugby League was born, incorporating the traditional Sydney clubs, successfully coercing the Sydney market to follow the newly created national competition.


title: National Rugby League

text: The prospect of a truly national rugby league competition in addition to the introduction of pay television in Australia attracted the attention of global media organisation, News Corporation, and it followed that professional rugby league was shaken to its very foundations in the mid-1990s with the advent of the Super League war. Initially a conflict over broadcasting rights, it became a dispute as to who controlled the sport and which traditional clubs would survive into the new national era, as News Limited formed their own Super League and admitted some former ARL clubs, poaching players from the original ARL league with high salaries. With twenty-two teams of highly varying quality playing in two competitions that year, crowd attendances and corporate sponsorships were spread very thinly, and many teams found themselves in financial difficulty. The ARL undertook moves to invite the traditional clubs that had moved to the Super League competition back into a re-unified competition. Following a period of negotiation with News Corporation, on 23 September 1997 the ARL announced that it was forming a new company to conduct the competition in 1998. On 7 October News' Manaaki Ranginui announced that he was confident that there would be a single competition in 1998. On 19 December, representatives of clubs affiliated with the Australian Rugby League gathered at the Sydney Football Stadium to decide whether to accept News Limited's offer of a settlement – eventually voting in favour by 36 votes to 4. As a result, in the following months the National Rugby League, jointly owned by the ARL and News Limited, was formed.


title: National Rugby League

text: It was announced that the inaugural National Rugby League (NRL) season of 1998 would have 20 teams competing, 19 remaining Super League and ARL teams plus the Melbourne Storm, who were created by Super League for their 1998 season. Clubs on both sides of the war were shut down. Super League decided to close the Hunter Mariners and the financially ruined Perth Reds, who were $10 million in debt at the end of 1997, while the ARL decided to close down the South Queensland Crushers, who were also in severe financial trouble. Additionally, at the end of 1998 the NRL decided to close down former Super League club, the Adelaide Rams and former ARL club, the Gold Coast Chargers, despite the Gold Coast franchise being one of the few clubs to make a profit during the Super League war.


title: National Rugby League

text: One condition of the peace agreement between the ARL and News Limited was that there would be a 14-team competition in 2000. The 20 clubs that played in 1998 would be assessed on various items such as sponsorship, crowds, on-field success and the like. It was also announced that clubs that merged would receive a large sum of money, as well as a guaranteed position in the 2000 NRL Competition. The St. George Dragons and the Illawarra Steelers were the first clubs to take up the offer, forming the joint-venture St. George Illawarra Dragons at the end of the 1998 season.


title: National Rugby League

text: The 1999 NRL Grand Final brought about a new official world record attendance for a game of rugby league. 107,999 spectators saw the Melbourne Storm defeat the newly created St. George Illawarra Dragons in the decider at Stadium Australia.


title: National Rugby League

text: Balmain and Western Suburbs formed the joint-venture club, the Wests Tigers at the end of 1999, while North Sydney and Manly Warringah created the ill-fated Northern Eagles. As part of another image makeover, a number of teams also released new club logos. The most notable of these was the Sydney Roosters, dropping the "City" section of their name for the 2000 season and beyond. Souths were controversially axed from the competition at the end of 1999 for failing to meet the criteria.


title: National Rugby League

text: This move was highly controversial and on 12 November 2000 about 80,000 marched in protest at their continued exclusion. South Sydney challenged the decision in the Federal Court claiming that the NRL agreement was exclusionary, intended to unfairly exclude South Sydney, and breached the Trade Practices Act. Justice Paul Finn ruled that the agreement did not specifically exclude any club and dismissed the Rabbitohs' claims for re-instatement into the national competition. Souths appealed this decision and were re-admitted into the competition in 2002.


title: National Rugby League

text: The Auckland Warriors experienced much financial hardship in the early part of the decade, ultimately collapsing before being resurrected as the New Zealand Warriors for the 2001 season. They made the Grand Final in 2002 and then again in 2011, losing both encounters to the Sydney Roosters and the re-instated Manly Warringah Sea Eagles, respectively.


title: National Rugby League

text: In 2001, Australia's largest telecommunications provider Telstra became naming rights sponsor of the NRL, with the competition's name becoming the NRL Telstra Premiership, while in 2002 David Gallop took over the CEO role from David Moffett, and the competition has become more and more popular each season.


title: National Rugby League

text: In 2001 the NRL Grand Final started to be played on Sunday nights, a shift from the traditional Sunday afternoon slot used for over a decade prior.


title: National Rugby League

text: The 2003 season was widely regarded as the most successful since the beginning of the National Rugby League in 1998. The Manly Warringah Rugby League Football Club took over the NRL licence from the Northern Eagles franchise, after the financial bankruptcy of the North Sydney faction made the joint-venture untenable. The Penrith Panthers rose from the bottom of the table to win the Premiership, while the Brisbane club returned to Suncorp Stadium mid-year. Season 2004 proved even more successful than 2003, with the North Queensland Cowboys going from 11th position in 2003 to third in 2004, narrowly missing out on a maiden Grand Final berth.


title: National Rugby League

text: Crowd average records were broken in 2003, 2004 and 2005. In 2005, the NRL reached record levels of popularity for its competition. Total crowds for the competition season almost reached the figures for the last year of the competition conducted by the ARL competition of 1995, prior to the Super League war. The average attendance record remained until 2010. From 2004 to 2005, there was a 39% increase in sponsorship, a 41% increase in merchandise royalties, and a 12% increase in playing participation. In 2005, Business Review Weekly ranked the NRL 497 in revenue of Australian private companies, with revenue of A$66.1m (+7%) with 35 employees. In 2004, Canterbury-Bankstown put a year of turmoil and disgrace at the aftermath of the alleged rape scandal to hold aloft the NRL trophy and give the club their first premiership since 1995. In 2005, a record national audience of 4.1 million tuned in to watch the grand final between the Wests Tigers and the North Queensland Cowboys.


title: National Rugby League

text: The 2006 NRL Grand Final was won by the Brisbane Broncos over the Melbourne Storm, 15–8. The matchup was a significant milestone in the history of the NRL, as two interstate teams (teams not from New South Wales, the "heartland" of the NRL) contested the grand final for the first time. In the city of Melbourne, whose team was playing in their second grand final, the game's television ratings were higher than in Sydney where the game was played. Crowds were down on 2005, however were better than any other year prior to that.


title: National Rugby League

text: In its tenth season the NRL returned to having a club based on the Gold Coast, Queensland with the inclusion of the Gold Coast Titans. The Titans were the first professional sporting team to occupy the Gold Coast since 1998, when the Gold Coast Chargers were one of the teams removed during the NRL's rationalisation process between the end of the Super League war and the 2000 season.


title: National Rugby League

text: The 2007 season saw the return of Monday Night Football and the inclusion of two Friday night games. Both of which turned out to be ratings successes. Another change from the previous seasons was a reduction in the number of byes per team in the season. With an odd number of teams contesting between 2002 and 2006, the draw meant that at least one team would have to have a bye each weekend. With the inclusion of the 16th team for the 2007 season, the National Rugby League had the option of reverting to back to the system used between 2000 and 2001 where every team played each round. That system was not used however, with teams were given just a single bye during the year, grouped in periods that will assist clubs around representative fixtures.


title: National Rugby League

text: The opening round saw two matches at Brisbane's Suncorp Stadium, the first featuring reigning champions Brisbane against fellow Queensland side North Queensland, while the second match featured the new club, the Gold Coast playing St. George Illawarra. The weather during the middle of the season was less than ideal, with cyclonic conditions severely affecting many NRL games played in Sydney and Newcastle.


title: National Rugby League

text: The 2007 finals series saw the South Sydney Rabbitohs return to finals football for the first time in decades. The season culminated on 30 September 2007, with the Grand Final contested between Manly and Melbourne. Melbourne won the title 34–8 and the Grand Final achieved the honour of being the most watched television show in Australia in 2007.


title: National Rugby League

text: Throughout 2008, the NRL celebrated 100 years since rugby league was introduced into Australia, with several initiatives to recognise the important milestone, including an extensive marketing campaign called the 'Centenary of Rugby League'. The competition began in March, with a special Heritage round held in mid-April, coinciding with the first round of competition played in 1908.


title: National Rugby League

text: For the second year in a row, the Grand Final was played between the Melbourne Storm and the Manly Warringah Sea Eagles, in the NRL's first ever twilight decider. The Manly club took out the premiership game 40–0, setting the record for the highest winning margin in a Grand Final (although the club formerly known as St. George Dragons were beaten 38–0 in 1975 and using the modern point scale of 4-point tries, this would amount to 46–0.) Furthermore, it was the first time a team had been kept scoreless in a Grand Final since 1978.


title: National Rugby League

text: The Grand Final that year was played between the Parramatta Eels and once again Melbourne Storm. Melbourne defeated Parramatta 23 – 16 to win the premiership to make it two premierships out of the last four grand finals for the Melbourne side.


title: National Rugby League

text: In 2010 the Inaugural All Stars Match was held on 13 February, in conjunction with the Sorry Day reconciliation anniversary to promote rugby league's long association and involvement with the Aboriginal community. The first match saw the Indigenous All Stars beat the NRL All Stars 16–12. The success of this event has seen it become a recurring fixture on the rugby league calendar with Queensland awarded the hosting rights for the next three years.


title: National Rugby League

text: The 29th State of Origin series was also played featuring the world's first live free-to-air 3D TV broadcast. Queensland later made further history by winning an unprecedented fifth series in a row, and winning the 2010 series by a scoreline of 3–0, their first Origin whitewash since 1995.


title: National Rugby League

text: In 2010 the NRL set a record total season average attendance of 17,367 per game and a record total season aggregate attendance of 3,490,778.


title: National Rugby League

text: During the 2010 finals series, the second qualifying match between the Wests Tigers and Sydney Roosters became the first McIntyre System final to go into extra time, with the One Hundred Minute Epic described in media circles as one of the greatest of the modern era.


title: National Rugby League

text: The 2010 Grand Final was played between the St. George Illawarra Dragons and the Sydney Roosters. St. George Illawarra won 32–8. This was the first premiership won by the club in its eleven-year existence and the first time in 31 years for the St. George part of the joint venture.


title: National Rugby League

text: After several years of preparation and build up, on 14 December 2010 the Australian Rugby League and News Corporation agreed upon a constitutional framework paving the way for the establishment of a new and independent commission to govern the sport in Australia. The negotiations of such a framework became drawn out over establishing details, primarily of sponsorship, media rights, funding of state bodies, funding of the Melbourne Storm, debate over News Ltd private ownership of clubs, and also of individual appointments to the new body.


title: National Rugby League

text: The 2011 Grand Final was contested between the Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles and the New Zealand Warriors. This was the second grand final involving the New Zealand Warriors. Manly recorded a 24–10 win claiming their second premiership under head coach Des Hasler.


title: National Rugby League

text: On 10 February 2012, the independent commission, known as the Australian Rugby League Commission assumed control of all levels of the game, replacing former state based boards and assuming full control of the NRL from the NRL partnership (comprising the previous ARL board and News Limited).


title: National Rugby League

text: The current Chairman is Peter V'landys AM. The 2012 Grand Final involved the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs and the Melbourne Storm, this was the first time since 2008 that the first and second placed teams contested the Grand Final. The Melbourne Storm recorded a 14–4 victory thus achieving their second premiership and claiming some vengeance for the stripped premierships.


title: National Rugby League

text: The 2013 season saw the resurgence of foundation clubs the Sydney Roosters and the South Sydney Rabbitohs with both clubs finishing first and second place respectively. The NRL was also left with a black eye after the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks were caught using performance-enhancing substances by ASADA dating back to 2011. The 2013 Grand Final was played between the Sydney Roosters and the Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles with the Roosters recording a 26–18 victory.


title: National Rugby League

text: The 2014 season started with the introduction of the Auckland Nines and was marred by the handing down of a million dollar fine to the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks for their role in the ASADA scandal while head coach Shane Flanagan was suspended for the entirety of the 2014 season. The 2014 Grand Final was contested by the South Sydney Rabbitohs and the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs. This was South Sydney's first grand final appearance since 1971. South Sydney would break their 43-year premiership drought with a 30–6 victory.


title: National Rugby League

text: The 2015 season saw the return of the Queensland juggernauts, The North Queensland Cowboys and the Brisbane Broncos who would finish inside the top four and contest the 2015 Grand Final. The 2015 Grand Final is considered by many to be the greatest grand final of all time as a high intensity match ended in dramatic circumstances when North Queensland scored as the full-time siren sounded. Johnathan Thurston would miss the conversion from the sideline as the ball hit the post thus sending the match into golden point, the first golden point grand final. Ben Hunt would drop the ball on the kick-off and hand the North Queensland side the chance to win which was converted as Johnathan Thurston successfully kicked a field goal to win the match 17–16.


title: National Rugby League

text: The 2016 season saw the Melbourne Storm return to the minor premiership position while the Canberra Raiders returned to the top four for the first time since the 2003. The Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks and reigning premiers North Queensland would fill out the top four. The season continued a trend of the minor premiership not being decided to the final round, the fourth consecutive year. The 2016 Grand Final was contested between the Melbourne Storm and the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks, it was the Cronulla's fourth grand final appearance while it was the seventh for the Melbourne club. The match was a tight affair and was not settled until after the siren had sounded. The Cronulla-Sutherland claimed their first premiership ending a famous 49-year drought by a score of 14–12.


title: National Rugby League

text: Following the success generated by the 2017 Women's Rugby League World Cup, a national women's league was established, and the first season commenced in September 2018 comprising four clubs aligned to existing NRL clubs.


title: National Rugby League

text: On 22 March 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the NRL became one of the last major sports in the world to continue playing games. The other major Australian football code, the Australian Football League (AFL), announced suspension of their season on that day. AFL's decision came as the Australian federal government announced a ban on "non essential" travel and closing of pubs, clubs and other venues. AFL leaders commented "As a community and as a code we all need to take the unprecedented and required actions to get through this together." However, the NRL announced it would be moving forward with their season. The decision prompted a wave of condemnation online, including from Australian personalities and sport people. The following day after Queensland closed its borders, the NRL announced that the season would have to be suspended indefinitely. It was feared that some teams would not survive this period without income, as it was foreseen as a financial catastrophe.


title: National Rugby League

text: On 9 April 2020, ARL Commissioner Wayne Pearce announced the NRL would return on 28 May. The announcement came under heavy criticism from the Government of New South Wales and health officials, with Premier Gladys Berejiklian saying she had not approved a return. However, the NRL released documents signed by NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller, showing approval for the NRL to continue without crowds. The competition ended up kicking off on that date, with the Parramatta Eels defeating the Brisbane Broncos 34–6 at Suncorp Stadium behind closed doors. The match drew the highest TV ratings for a regular season game since 2014. The AFL returned over two weeks later than the NRL, who were the first sport to return to play worldwide that actually ceased play.


title: National Rugby League

text: In October 2021, after months of speculation, the NRL and the ARLC announced that the competition would expand to 17 teams, with the admission of the Dolphins for the 2023 season. The Dolphins are based in the far northern-suburb of Redcliffe, near Brisbane.


title: National Rugby League

text: Since the Australian Rugby League Commission was inaugurated in 2012, there have been three chairmen:


title: National Rugby League

text: The NRL currently consists of seventeen clubs. Nine clubs are based within the Greater Sydney area (including one that also represents the Illawarra region south of Sydney), another in regional New South Wales, four in Queensland, and one each in Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory, and New Zealand. The league operates on a single group system, with no divisions or conferences and no relegation or promotion.


title: National Rugby League

text: A total of twenty-three clubs have played in the NRL since its first season in 1998. Eleven clubs have been members for every season.


title: National Rugby League

text: Two of the clubs currently in the NRL were founded in 1908, the first year of rugby league competition in Australia: the Sydney Roosters (founded as 'Eastern Suburbs') and the South Sydney Rabbitohs. The Wests Tigers are a merger of two other foundation clubs: The Western Suburbs Magpies and the Balmain Tigers.


title: National Rugby League

text: The NRL pre season typically begins in February and ends in early March. Clubs generally use this time to organise trial matches to test playing combinations. However, some clubs play for trophies: Easts and Wests play for the Foundation Cup while South Sydney and St. George Illawarra play for the Charity Shield. The trials are typically played in cities and towns that normally don't host NRL matches. In the past a World Sevens rugby league football tournament has been hosted, however this was scrapped due to injury concerns.


title: National Rugby League

text: Beginning in 2010, the All Stars match has become a major fixture in the NRL preseason. The teams are chosen via public voting and the two sides play for the Arthur Beetson Trophy. In 2018, the game was temporarily removed from the calendar due to the World Cup being played the previous year citing an excessive player workload. The match returned in 2019 and was hosted in Melbourne with the Australian Indigenous All Stars taking on the New Zealand Maori All Stars.


title: National Rugby League

text: In 2014, the inaugural rugby league nines tournament took place, featuring all sixteen NRL clubs. It was initially staged at Eden Park, Auckland, New Zealand. This two-day tournament has now become a regular fixture, taking place in February each year. Women's nines games were also fixtured alongside the main tournament between the Australian and New Zealand women's teams, however now feature the four NRLW teams. In 2018 the tournament was removed from the calendar due to the World Cup being played the previous year citing an excessive player workload, however, it was brought back in 2020.


title: National Rugby League

text: The World Club Challenge is an annual pre-season match played between the champion of the National Rugby League and the champion of the Super League. The first match of its kind was the 1976 World Club Challenge and it was then played sporadically throughout the late 80s and 90s, including a one off Super League tournament in 1997, before becoming a regular annual pre-season fixture since 2000.


title: National Rugby League

text: In 2015, the competition was expanded to include two exhibition games before the Challenge game. This expanded series, called the "World Club Series", ran from 2015 to 2017. The first two Series saw the leagues' champions joined by two invited teams from each league, resulting in a three-game series. Each invited team represented their league in a single game, played in the days leading up to the usual Challenge match. In 2017, only one invited team from each league participated, with the NRL citing tight schedules, distant travel and long seasons as an impediment to the Series. In 2018 the series was cancelled, with only the usual Challenge match played and has continued as a single match since.


title: National Rugby League

text: As rugby league is a winter sport in Australia, the NRL premiership season begins in early March, with games played every weekend for 27 weeks, until the start of September. In most rounds, one match is played on Thursday night, two on Friday night, three on Saturday and two on Sunday. Special themed weeks include ANZAC Round, Heritage Round, Women in League Round, Retro Round, Beanies for Brain Cancer round and Rivalry Round. Separate trophies between rival teams are also presented throughout the season. In 2019, the NRL introduced Magic Round, which featured all sixteen teams playing at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane over the weekend. It was deemed a success and has now been a scheduled annual event since.


title: National Rugby League

text: Teams receive two competition points for a win, and one point for a draw. The bye also receives two points; a loss, no points. Teams on the ladder are ranked by competition points, then match points differential (for and against) and points percentage are used to separate teams with equal competition points. At the end of the regular season, the club which is ranked highest on the ladder is declared minor premiers.


title: National Rugby League

text: As well as playing for their club in the premiership, NRL players are regularly selected to play in a number of representative competitions that are conducted throughout each season. The representative season is generally considered to be a period of rugby league that runs from about the middle of April until the middle of July each year. Up until the 2017 season the fixtures took into account the following games:


title: National Rugby League

text: From 2018, the season was altered to create a shorter workload for players. A number of representative games were scrapped and timing changed therefore the representative season was changed to include:


title: National Rugby League

text: The eight highest placed teams at the end of the regular season compete in the finals series. The system consists of a number of games between the top eight teams over four weeks in September, until only two teams remain. These two teams then contest the Grand Final, which is usually played on the first Sunday of October. From 1998 to 2011, the NRL used the McIntyre Final Eight System but with the introduction of the ARLC, it was decided to change to the current format which was perceived as fairer for teams finishing in the Top 4.


title: National Rugby League

text: The NRL Grand Final, which determines the season's premiers, is one of Australia's major sporting events and is one of the largest attended club championship events in the world. It has been contested at Sydney's Stadium Australia each year since 1999, with the exception of 2021 when it was played at Brisbane's Suncorp Stadium due to the COVID pandemic. The first year it was held at Stadium Australia, the NRL Grand Final broke the record for attendance at an Australian rugby league game, with 107,999 people attending.


title: National Rugby League

text: The Grand Final had traditionally been played on Sunday afternoons, shifting to 8 pm in 2001, then to 7 pm thereafter. However, from 2008, a compromise was reached between official broadcaster Nine Network's preferred starting time and the afternoon starting time of 3 pm, with the Grand Final beginning at 5 pm AEST.


title: National Rugby League

text: Each year the NRL Grand Final Breakfast, a function that is attended by both teams, hundreds of guests and screened live on Australian television is held during the week before the game.


title: National Rugby League

text: The game itself is usually preceded by an opening ceremony featuring entertainment and the singing of the national anthem by well-known Australasian and international musical acts. After the pre-game entertainment it is traditional for the NRL trophy to be delivered to the field by an Australian Army helicopter shortly before kick off.


title: National Rugby League

text: At the conclusion of the Grand Final there is a presentation ceremony where the winning team are awarded premiership rings. The player judged to be the man-of-the-match by the Australian national team selectors is awarded the prestigious Clive Churchill Medal and the Prime Minister of Australia is typically on-hand to hand the trophy to the winning captain.


title: National Rugby League

text: In 2010 the Government of New South Wales secured the grand final for Stadium Australia until 2022 for $45 million.


title: National Rugby League

text: National Rugby League footballers are among Australasia's most famous athletes, commanding multimillion-dollar playing contracts and sponsorship deals. Each club in the NRL has a "top squad" of twenty-five players, who are signed under a salary cap. For the most part, the players who play in NRL matches are sourced from these top squads. During a season the need may arise for a club to use players outside these 25, in which case players are usually sourced from the club's corresponding NRL Under-20s team or a feeder club in the New South Wales Cup or Queensland Cup.


title: National Rugby League

text: In the recent years, the influence of Polynesian players on the NRL has grown, with figures from the 2011 season showing that 35% of NRL players and over 45% of NRL Under-20s players are of Polynesian background. This increase in Polynesian players has been blamed for the decline of Indigenous players, dropping from 21% in the 1990s to 11% for the 2009 season.


title: National Rugby League

text: The first Indigenous Australian to play in the NSWRL/NRL was New South Wales Rugby League premiership player George Green, who debuted in 1909. Since that time, many high-profile indigenous athletes have played in the competition, including Arthur Beetson (the first Aboriginal person to captain an Australian national team in any sport) and former Test match representatives Johnathan Thurston and Greg Inglis.


title: National Rugby League

text: At the elite level of the game, Indigenous Australians represented 35% of the roster for the Kangaroos, 21% of players at the 2012 State of Origin series, 12% of NRL players and a further 8% of the NRL Under-20s players. By way of comparison, 2.3% of the Australian population identified themselves as Indigenous in the 2006 Australian census.


title: National Rugby League

text: To celebrate the strong Indigenous ties to the game, the NRL holds a preseason All Stars game, featuring a team made up of Indigenous Australians playing a publicly voted team consisting of the non-Indigenous players, and an Indigenous Leadership Group has formed, consisting of the game's elite Indigenous players. The Leadership Group hosts regular multi-day camps where all Indigenous NRL players are invited to learn more about Indigenous culture.


title: National Rugby League

text: Both the All Stars match and the Leadership Group were ideas pioneered by former player Preston Campbell, with the All Stars man of the match receiving the Preston Campbell medal.


title: National Rugby League

text: A salary cap was introduced to the NSWRL in 1990 to even the playing field of teams in the Winfield Cup.


title: National Rugby League

text: As of 2013 the club grant is $7.1 million which covers the salary cap of $5.85 million and a minimum wage for $80,000 for the top twenty-five players at each club. The salary cap will increase to $6.3 million in 2014, $6.55 million in 2015, $6.8 million by 2016 and $7 million in 2017.


title: National Rugby League

text: The cap is actively policed and penalties for clubs found to have breached the NRL salary cap regulations include fines of lesser of half the amount involved or $500,000 and/or deduction of premiership points. For example, six clubs were fined for minor infractions in 2003. These infractions are usually technical in nature, and can sometimes be affected by third-party factors such as loss of sponsorship revenue affecting an allowance. During the 2007 season the NRL implemented ways of creating a fair and more beneficial cap for players and clubs.


title: National Rugby League

text: In 2010, following the Melbourne Storm salary cap scandal, the NRL introduced requirements for players and their agents to sign statutory declarations pledging their contracts comply with salary cap regulations, where previously only club chairmen and chief executives did so for biannual salary cap audits.


title: National Rugby League

text: In 2002, the Bulldogs were fined the maximum of $500,000 and deducted all 37 premiership points received during the season after it was found that they had committed serious and systematic breaches of the salary cap totalling $2.13 million over the past three years, including $750,000 in 2001 and $920,000 in 2002; these were described by NRL chief executive David Gallop as "exceptional in both its size and its deliberate and ongoing nature". The points penalty meant that the club won the 2002 wooden spoon (Souths would have finished last if not for the breaches), and as the club had been leading the competition table prior to the imposition of the penalties, this was a shattering outcome for the club and its fans. Two senior club officials were jailed for fraud as a result of these breaches.


title: National Rugby League

text: In 2005, the New Zealand Warriors were fined $430,000 and were ordered to start the 2006 season with a four premiership point deficit and cut their payroll by $450,000 after club officials revealed that their former management had exceeded the salary cap by $1.1 million over the last two years. The points penalty meant that the Warriors missed a finals berth in 2006.


title: National Rugby League

text: On 22 April 2010, following revelations by an internal whistleblower and investigation by the NRL, Storm officials revealed that the club had committed serious and systematic breaches of the salary cap regulations between 2006 and 2010 by running a well-organized dual contract and bookkeeping system that concealed a total of $3.78 million in payments made to players outside of the salary cap from the NRL. This included: $303,000 in 2006, $459,000 in 2007, $957,000 in 2008, $1.021 million in 2009 and $1.04 million in 2010. As a result, the club was stripped of the 2007 and 2009 premierships, 2006–2008 minor premierships and the following year, the 2010 World Club Challenge trophy. They were also fined a then Australian sporting record of $1.689 million ($1.1 million in NRL prize money which was equally distributed between the remaining 15 clubs, $89,000 in prize money from the World Club Challenge which was distributed to the Leeds Rhinos, and a maximum of $500,000 for breaching the salary cap regulations). In addition they were ordered to cut their payroll by $1.0125 million, deducted all eight premiership points received during the 2010 season and barred from receiving premiership points for the remainder of the 2010 season. The points penalty meant that the club won the 2010 wooden spoon. The former directors attempted unsuccessful legal action against the penalties which collapsed, and the club also had to pay the NRLs legal costs. The matter was also referred to ASIC, the Australian Tax Office, the Victorian State Revenue Office, and the Victoria Police to investigate possible fraud however by May 2011 these investigations were closed. The players themselves were found to have not done anything wrong during this time so individual awards are recognised in addition, the players were still eligible for Test/State of Origin selection.


title: National Rugby League

text: Prior to the start of the 2016 NRL season, the Parramatta Eels faced the prospect with starting the season on −4 points due to salary cap indiscretions in 2015, however the NRL was satisfied with governance changes at the Eels and no points were deducted. However, it was revealed in March that third-party payments had been made by several companies to several players, which is strictly prohibited in the NRL. On 3 May 2016, NRL CEO Todd Greenberg announced that the club would be docked the twelve competition points they have accrued so far this season, as well as fined $1 million and stripped of the 2016 NRL Auckland Nines title it won in February. In addition, the NRL also announced that the Eels would not be able to accrue any further competition points until they fall under the salary cap, which they were reported to be $500,000 over as of 3 May 2016. Five officials, including chairman Steve Sharp, deputy chairman Tom Issa, director Peter Serrao, chief executive John Boulous and football manager Daniel Anderson, were also sacked. On 9 July, after over 2 months of club officials contesting the preliminary penalties, Parramatta were handed their punishment with the addition of their for/against points tally accumulated from rounds 1–9 being deducted.


title: National Rugby League

text: In 2018, the Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles were fined $750,000, two officials (Neil Bare and Joe Kelly were suspended and a $660,000 penalty was applied to the salary cap for 2018 and the next year for breaches of the salary cap). Manly was proved by the NRL chief executive that third-party payments and deals were made to attract more players to the club.


title: National Rugby League

text: The NRL Judiciary is made up of former players who convene in three-man panels to rule on on-field incidents. The judiciary is currently chaired by Wollongong district court judge Paul Conlon and made up of former players Mal Cochrane, Michael Buettner, Bradley Clyde, Sean Garlick, Don McKinnon and Bob Lindner.


title: National Rugby League

text: An integrity Unit was formed on 7 February 2013 and is headed by former Federal Court judge Tony Whitlam.


title: National Rugby League

text: The Provan-Summons trophy is the NRL's main prize, awarded to the team that wins the premiership. Its sculptured design is similar to the Winfield Cup trophy, which was introduced for the 1982 NSWRFL season. It is a three-dimensional cast of a famous photo called "The Gladiators", which depicts a mud-soaked Norm Provan of St. George and Arthur Summons of Western Suburbs embracing after the 1963 NSWRFL season's Grand Final. It was not officially named the Provan-Summons Trophy until 2013, the 50th anniversary of the 1963 Grand Final. The trophy is awarded following each grand final to the captain of the winning club. The trophy was mysteriously broken during grand final celebrations in 2021.


title: National Rugby League

text: Created in 1951, the J. J. Giltinan Shield is awarded to the club ranked highest on the NRL ladder after the premiership season concludes. Typically this team is known as the minor premiers.


title: National Rugby League

text: The Clive Churchill Medal is awarded to the most outstanding player in a grand final. It is named after former Australian fullback Clive Churchill.


title: National Rugby League

text: The Dally M Medal is the highlight of the Dally M Awards and was named after Henry Herbert 'Dally' Messenger, who was instrumental in the establishment of rugby league football in Australia.


title: National Rugby League

text: The Dally M has been the official player-of-the-year award, and the highest individual honour in Australian rugby league, since the unification of the game in 1998. Before 1998 the highest award was the Rothmans Medal.


title: National Rugby League

text: As well as honouring the best and fairest player of the year, the Dally M awards recognise the premier player in each position, the best coach and the most outstanding rookie of the season.


title: National Rugby League

text: Originally The Immortals were Four players named by the sport's major Australian magazine "Rugby League Week" as the nation's greatest ever.


title: National Rugby League

text: Established in 1981, the group of four former Test captains: , Clive Churchill, Bob Fulton, Reg Gasnier, Johnny Raper and were those appointed by Rugby League Week between 1981 and 2012. Wally Lewis, Graeme Langlands added in 1999 Arthur Beetson 2003 Andrew Johns 2012


title: National Rugby League

text: Following the demise of Rugby League Week, the Australian Rugby League Commission took ownership of The Immortals concept and expanded the group on 1 August 2018 by inclusion of Mal Meninga, Norm Provan, Frank Burge, Dave Brown and Dally Messenger.


title: National Rugby League

text: The Queensland Rugby League's Team of the Century is a team that consisted of the greatest rugby league players from 1909 to 2008. This team was picked by six judges in 2008 from a list of 100 nominated players.


title: National Rugby League

text: The New South Wales Rugby League's Team of the Century is a team that consisted of the greatest rugby league players from 1908 to 2007.


title: National Rugby League

text: The 2022 season rated 134.447 million viewers in Australia, at an average viewership of 620,000 per game, with a roughly 60/40 split between viewers when games are broadcast both free-to-air on Nine and subscription viewers on Fox League and Kayo Sports.


title: National Rugby League

text: The 2022 season also attracted 3,265,911 spectators through the gates, at an average of 16,248 per match.


title: National Rugby League

text: Within Australia all matches are broadcast on both the Nine Network and Fox Sports through 2027. The Fox Sports contract was signed in May 2020 and the NRL extended their contract with Nine in December 2021 to match the length of the contract with Fox Sports through 2027. In New Zealand all matches, including representative fixtures such as the All Stars Match and the State of Origin series, are shown live on Sky Sport. Prime broadcasts select games live in New Zealand starting from the 2022 season, and will continue to broadcast every Warriors match on delay.


title: National Rugby League

text: In Australia there are television shows dedicated to discussing the NRL. The programmes are listed in order of the day and time viewed in their primary broadcast market:


title: National Rugby League

text: In most Pacific countries, all matches are broadcast on Digicel and other networks in these three countries. In PNG, the NRL also broadcast for free on TVWan.


title: National Rugby League

text: Outside of Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands, all matches are currently available in high definition on the subscription streaming service Watch NRL which operates through its website and a dedicated app. Watch NRL is operated by Fox Sports Australia.


title: National Rugby League

text: The NRL has several exclusive rights partners to broadcast matches live via radio nationwide. FM coverage is provided by Triple M while AM coverage is contracted to ABC Local Radio and 2GB. All radio coverage is available to be streamed live from the NRL website.


title: National Rugby League

text: 2GB has the commercial rights to four matches per week, covering the game through the Continuous Call Team program. 2GB also air representative games, as well as all matches throughout the finals series, and all three matches on Grand Final day. The coverage is networked to stations across the country, typically those owned by Southern Cross Media Group, Grant Broadcasters and other station groups on Nine Radio.


title: National Rugby League

text: ABC Local Radio has the rights to seven NRL matches per week in the Australian Capital Territory, Queensland and New South Wales.


title: National Rugby League

text: Triple M has exclusive access to Thursday night, Saturday 4 pm and Sunday night matches and is broadcast on commercial stations across the country. Triple M also broadcast the State of Origin series, the finals series and the Grand Final.


title: National Rugby League

text: 2SM formerly held the rights to air Thursday Night and Sunday 4pm games via NRL Nation. These games were also aired across their affiliates across NSW. 2UE also formerly held rights to matches.


title: National Rugby League

text: Big League was the competition's official publication, released Thursday and produced by News Magazines. The publication ceased operations in 2020 leaving the game without an official program.


title: National Rugby League

text: There have been many top selling video games made for the Australian rugby league market. The games below are sorted by year released.


title: National Rugby League

text: Most NRL teams have a squad of dancers for cheerleading that are usually involved in dancing, charity work, fundraisers, and modelling. Some Notable NRL cheerleaders are Jennifer Hawkins for the Newcastle Knights, Chloe Butler for the Emeralds and Tabrett Bethell for the Cronulla Sharks Mermaids.


title: National Rugby League

text: Official NRL statistics encompass all first grade competitions, namely the New South Wales Rugby League, Australian Rugby League, Super League, and the present day NRL.


title: National Rugby League

text: The NRL and its clubs receive significant revenue from sponsorships, with sponsors' logos appearing on most parts of players' and referees' uniforms, the playing surface and even the ball itself. Since 2001, the National Rugby League premiership has been sponsored by Telstra and known as the 'NRL Telstra Premiership'. Prior to this, the competition was simply known as the 'National Rugby League'.