1922 NSWRFL Grand Final
Wednesday, 6 September 1922 · Sydney Cricket Ground, Sydney, New South Wales
1922 NSWRFL Grand Final result: North Sydney def. Glebe, 35-3, at Sydney Cricket Ground, Sydney, New South Wales on Wednesday, 6 September 1922.
Sourcing caveat: Contemporarily styled 'the Final' - a playoff required because North Sydney and Glebe tied on 28 points; 'Grand Final' is a retrospective label. Attendance is a contemporary estimate ('around 15,000'). In 1922 a try was worth 3 points and a goal 2 points; the scoring breakdown above reconciles exactly to 35-3 (North Sydney: Harold Horder x2, Cec Blinkhorn x2, Frank Rule x2 and Herman Peters tries x 3 = 21, plus Horder 7 goals = 14, totalling 35; Glebe: Eddie Summers' try x 3 = 3, no goals). Glebe's coach could not be confirmed - the club does not appear on rugbyleagueproject.org's 1922 coaches list, and the team was likely captain-coached by Bill Benson, but no source states this explicitly. Squad numbers reflect standard positional numbering. Exact try minutes and goal-attempt counts could not be confirmed.
Result
| Team | Score | |
|---|---|---|
| Winner | North Sydney | 35 |
| Runner-up | Glebe | 3 |
Attendance: 15,000
NRL 1922 — full season ladder & finals series
| Pos | Club | P | W | D | L | PF | PA | Diff | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Glebe | 16 | 12 | 0 | 4 | 284 | 154 | +130 | 28 |
| 2 | North Sydney | 16 | 12 | 0 | 4 | 306 | 136 | +170 | 28 |
| 3 | Eastern Suburbs | 16 | 9 | 2 | 5 | 217 | 177 | +40 | 24 |
| 4 | South Sydney | 15 | 9 | 1 | 5 | 207 | 187 | +20 | 23 |
| 5 | Balmain | 16 | 8 | 2 | 6 | 168 | 145 | +23 | 22 |
| 6 | Western Suburbs | 16 | 6 | 0 | 10 | 164 | 201 | -37 | 16 |
| 7 | Newtown | 16 | 5 | 1 | 10 | 169 | 200 | -31 | 15 |
| 8 | University | 15 | 5 | 0 | 10 | 148 | 287 | -139 | 14 |
| 9 | St. George | 16 | 2 | 0 | 14 | 140 | 316 | -176 | 8 |
No finals series this season — the minor premier was awarded the premiership outright.
Finals series
Final
| Date | Result | Venue | Attendance |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6 Sep 1922 | North Sydney Bears 35–3 Glebe | Sydney Cricket Ground, Sydney, NSW | 15,000 |
Match officials
| Referee | Tom McMahon |
Scorers
| North Sydney | Tries: Harold Horder — minute unconfirmed; Harold Horder — minute unconfirmed; Cec Blinkhorn — minute unconfirmed; Cec Blinkhorn — minute unconfirmed; Frank Rule — minute unconfirmed; Frank Rule — minute unconfirmed; Herman Peters — minute unconfirmed Goals: Harold Horder (7/unconfirmed) |
| Glebe | Tries: Eddie Summers — minute unconfirmed |
Teams
| North Sydney | Glebe | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Norm Proctor | Fullback | Reg Stapleton | 1 |
| 2 | Harold Horder | Wing | Charlie Ogle | 2 |
| 3 | Herman Peters | Centre | Tommy James | 3 |
| 4 | Frank Rule | Centre | Eddie Summers | 4 |
| 5 | Cec Blinkhorn | Wing | Jack Toohey | 5 |
| 6 | Roderick Hodgins | Five-eighth | Billy Stirton | 6 |
| 7 | Duncan Thompson (c) | Halfback | Bill Benson (c) | 7 |
| 8 | Wally Hancock | Lock | Bert Gray | 8 |
| 9 | Jack Ives | Second Row | Frank Burge | 9 |
| 10 | Reg Farnell | Second Row | Tom McGrath | 10 |
| 11 | Jack Baker | Prop | Jack Redmond | 11 |
| 12 | George Green | Hooker | Walter Haddock | 12 |
| 13 | James Pye | Prop | Laidley Burge | 13 |
| Substitutes | ||||
| — | no reserve/interchange players recorded — no interchange bench existed in 1922; Wally Hancock replaced Alf Faull in the named team before kickoff | no reserve/interchange players recorded — no interchange bench existed in 1922 | — | |
| Chris McKivat | Coach | — | ||
Clive Churchill Medal
The Clive Churchill Medal was first awarded in 1986; no official best-on-ground medal existed for this Grand Final.
Match context
For the first time since the premiership's earliest days, the first-past-the-post system failed to produce an outright winner in 1922. After sixteen rounds North Sydney and Glebe had finished locked together on 28 competition points, each with twelve wins and four defeats, and the NSWRFL ordered a playoff final at the Sydney Cricket Ground to break the deadlock. Played on a Wednesday afternoon, 6 September 1922, before a crowd of around 15,000, the match promised a tight struggle between the two best sides in Sydney. It delivered instead one of the most lopsided deciders the competition would ever see. North Sydney, the reigning premiers after their unbeaten 1921 campaign, got away to a 10-0 half-time lead and then simply demolished Glebe after the interval, running out winners 35-3. The afternoon belonged above all to Harold Horder, the brilliant winger regarded by many contemporaries as the finest player in the game, who scored two tries and kicked seven goals for an extraordinary twenty individual points in a premiership decider. Around him Cec Blinkhorn crossed twice, Rule scored a double of his own and Peters added another, seven tries in all, while Glebe's solitary reply came through a try to Summers. The result gave North Sydney back-to-back premierships in 1921 and 1922, a golden peak the club would never scale again, as it proved to be the last first-grade premiership in North Sydney's history. For Glebe, the foundation club from the inner-western waterfront, the thrashing was a cruel end to their finest season of the decade; the Dirty Reds had been premiership contenders almost annually since 1908 without ever taking the title, and this playoff was as close as they would come. They never did win a premiership: at the end of the 1929 season the club was voted out of the competition, leaving the 1922 final as the high-water mark of their existence. The match also carried structural significance, demonstrating that the league needed a mechanism beyond the bare ladder, a lesson reinforced in each of the next two seasons, when ties at the top again forced playoff finals, and one that pointed the way toward the permanent finals system adopted in 1926.
Sources
Data last verified: 11 August 2026.
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