The Brisbane Rugby League team, also called Brisbane Firsts or Brisbane Capitals, was an Australian representative rugby league football side made up of players from the Brisbane Rugby League's first-grade premiership clubs. The team was assembled occasionally from 1907, the year rugby league football was first played in Australia, until 1988, the year the Brisbane Broncos began competing in Sydney's Winfield Cuppremiership.[1]
History
In 1907 a team made up of Brisbane rugby players was formed to play a game for the 1907–1908 New Zealand rugby tour of Australia and Great Britain, which the visiting 'All Blacks' won 43-10. The Bulimba Cup was a competition contested by the Brisbane, Ipswich and Toowoomba representative rugby league sides which started in 1925.
When the Brisbane Broncos assembled the team to play their first ever game in 1988, most of the inaugural 17 players (including Lewis, Scott, Miles, Kilroy, and Dowling) that defeated the defending 1987 Sydney Rugby League premiers Manly-Warringah Sea-Eagles 44-10 at Lang Park, had previously played in the Brisbane Rugby League's team. Later that year a combined Brisbane team played against the touring Great Britain Lions. Since 1988 a Queensland Residents side has occasionally been selected and drew heavily on the Brisbane Rugby League premiership until that competition ended in 1997.
