Tina Turner is best known as a trailblazing rocker, but Australia also remembered her for her “unique” role in the history of rugby league in the country.
As tributes poured in from around the world to one of music’s biggest names, who died on Wednesday aged 83 in Switzerland, many Australians fondly recalled her influential love affair with the sport.
“She played a unique role in probably the most iconic sports marketing campaign in our history,” National Rugby League chief executive officer Andrew Abdo said yesterday. “It was inspirational and it got people thinking about rugby league differently. The thing that made that campaign so successful was Tina — what a wonderful person she was.”
Photo: Reuters
Australian rugby league is now massively popular and a business behemoth, but it was a different story in the late 1980s, when it was derided by some as working-class and macho.
The sport’s top brass decided it needed a revamp to attract a new audience, particularly women and families, and that’s where the American “Queen of Rock ’n’ Roll” came in.
Then-general manager John Quayle’s assistant was friends with Roger Davies, an Australian rugby league fan living in the US and Turner’s manager.
It led to her hit What You Get Is What You See being used in a risque 1989 marketing campaign featuring montages of sometimes shirtless players on the beach and the pitch as Turner belted out the song.
“There was a lot of opposition to it because we were using at the time — and it was stated — ‘a black American grandmother’ to promote the game of rugby league and that was very controversial,” Quayle told national broadcaster ABC.
“It was controversial until such time that people heard it. And when they heard it and people saw that commercial, they acknowledged across the nation that it was one of the greatest sporting advertisements ever,” he added.
An overwhelming success, it was quickly followed with another promo featuring her power ballad Simply The Best, which is credited with sending rugby league to unprecedented levels of popularity in Australia.
In an even bigger coup, Turner was then taken to Australia to perform live at the 1993 grand final between the Brisbane Broncos and the Saint George Dragons in Sydney.
She sang Simply The Best during the halftime show and joined the celebrations alongside the players at fulltime to entrench herself into rugby league folklore.
Quayle said that although Turner knew “nothing” about the sport initially, she “warmed to it.”
“She loved the players. She understood after a little while how fit they were, how good looking they were,” he said.
Simply The Best was re-used ahead of the 2020 season, with Turner saying that she was “thrilled.”
“Thirty years on, to see the song being celebrated and the campaign relaunched is very humbling,” ABC cited her as saying at the time.
“The [1993] grand final was my first rugby league game and I’ve never forgotten it,” she said.
Shohei Ohtani and Clayton Kershaw on Friday joined their Los Angeles Dodgers teammates in sticking their fists out to show off their glittering World Series rings at a ceremony. “There’s just a lot of excitement, probably more than I can ever recall with the Dodger fan base and our players,” manager Dave Roberts said before Los Angeles rallied to beat the Detroit Tigers 8-5 in 10 innings. “What a way to cap off the first two days of celebrations,” Roberts said afterward. “By far the best opening week I’ve ever experienced. I just couldn’t have scripted it any better.” A choir in the
The famously raucous Hong Kong Sevens are to start today in a big test for a shiny new stadium at the heart of a major US$3.85 billion sports park in the territory. Officials are keeping their fingers crossed that the premier event in Hong Kong’s sporting and social calendar goes off without a hitch at the 50,000-seat Kai Tak Stadium. They hope to entice major European soccer teams to visit in the next few months, with reports in December last year saying that Liverpool were in talks about a pre-season tour. Coldplay are to perform there next month, all part of Hong Kong’s
Shohei Ohtani, Teoscar Hernandez and Tommy Edman on Thursday smashed home runs to give the reigning World Series champions the Los Angeles Dodgers a 5-4 victory over Detroit on the MLB’s opening day in the US. The Dodgers, who won two season-opening games in Tokyo last week, raised their championship banner on a day when 28 clubs launched the season in the US. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts shuffled his batting lineup with all four leadoff hitters finally healthy as Ohtani was followed by Mookie Betts, then Hernandez and Freddie Freeman in the cleanup spot, switching places with Hernandez. “There’s a Teoscar tax to
Matvei Michkov did not score on Monday, but the Philadelphia rookie had a hand in both goals as hosts the Flyers earned a 2-1 victory over the Nashville Predators. Ryan Poehling and Jamie Drysdale got the goals for the Flyers (31-36-9, 71 points), who won their third straight. Michkov and Travis Konecny assisted on both. Ivan Fedotov stopped 28 shots to earn his first win since March 1, ending a personal six-game losing streak. Zachary L’Heureux got the lone goal for Nashville. Michael McCarron and Brady Skjei got the assists for the Predators (27-39-8, 62 points), who have just four goals in their