Learn about Dally Messenger, Frank Burge and Dave Brown, three of the NRL’s new Immortals

THREE pre-war players have been named to the Immortals. Learn everything you need to know about Frank Burge, Dave Brown and Dally Messenger.

NRL world cup foortball yeah yeah

FOR the first time, the NRL has opened the door to player from the pre-war era to become Immortals.

Dally Messenger, Dave Brown and Frank Burge loom large in rugby league history and each are deserving of the honour.

SHOCK: Three new Immortals named

While footy history buffs know their story well, casual fans may not be as familiar.

Here’s everything you need to know about the three oldest Immortals.

DALLY MESSENGER, 1907-13

WITHOUT this handshake, none of it happens.

There’d be no NRL, no Origin series, no Immortals, none of it.

Herbert Henry Messenger, better known as Dally, changed the trajectory of rugby league in titanic fashion when he made the fateful decision to switch from rugby union.

This was a mere 12 years after rugby league began life by breaking away from rugby union in the great split of 1895. James J Giltinan, Henry Hoyle and Victor Trumper started up the New South Wales Rugby League, bringing the professional game to this country for the first time.

The handshake that birthed a game.

For the fledgling sport to grow, they needed players who could bring the punters through the gates. They needed the kind of players who could light up an afternoon with their skill, their daring. They needed the best, because the rest wouldn’t cut it.

They needed Messenger.

As the most exciting rugby union player of the day, Messenger had wowed crowds around the country for Eastern Suburbs, New South Wales and Australia since 1905. He was a goalkicking centre of frightening speed, impossible skill and unorthodox, untameable talent.

After leaving the final decision up to his mother, Messenger signed. He shook hands with Giltinan, and nothing would ever be the same.

He played for New South Wales against New Zealand in their three match series later in August of that year, the first top flight games of rugby league played on Australian soil. Messenger then linked up with the Kiwis for their tour of England. They were known as the professional All Blacks, but history knows them as the All Golds.

Nobody looms as large over the game as Messenger.

Messenger was the star of the tour, scoring 187 points in 32 matches. When he returned, he linked up with Easts for the first NSWRL premiership and played in the first Australian Test matches against New Zealand before heading back to Britain with the first Kangaroos at the tail end of 1908.

Word of his efforts with the All Golds played a big part in getting the tour off the ground

The new code thrived, thanks in no small part to Messenger’s star power. Rugby league quickly established itself as a competitor to the more established amateur game. The seed of everything rugby league would ever be in Australia was planted.

Messenger’s importance in the dawning days of rugby league cannot be overstated. The fledging efforts of rugby league in Australia may well have been snuffed out by rugby union or Aussie rules were it not for his impact. He won three premierships with the Roosters,

There used to be a portrait of Messenger that hung in the old NSWRL offices. There was no caption — just a plaque underneath it that read “The Master”.

He is still the master, now and always, and rugby league couldn’t have existed here without him.

DAVE BROWN, 1930-1941

IF any sportsman from any code was compared to Don Bradman today there would be riots in the streets. Nobody gets compared to The Don. It’s sacrilegious.

So imagine, then, how good Dave Brown must have been to be dubbed “The Bradman of League” when Bradman was still the Bradman of cricket.

The premier player of the 1930s, Brown was a pointscoring colossus, setting records that remain unbeaten to this day and could stand the test of time.

Take your pick from his glittering resume.

Brown was know as the Bradman of League.

There was the time he scored 45 points in a single match, for example, which remains the highest single game total of any player ever, or the time he put up 38 in a game, which is equal second

In 1935 he scored 38 tries for the season, which is still the record, and his 238 points for the season stood for 30 years.

He captained Australia at 22 and from 1935 to 1937 his Eastern Suburbs side won three straight premierships, losing just one of the 41 matches they played during that period.

Records fall as a game grows older. That’s just how sport works. But Brown’s have not only stood the test of time, they may live on forever. None of the players who have come since have been able to match him. Those who come in the future may not either.

FRANK BURGE, 1911-1927

There has never been a player like Frank Burge and there never will be again.

The greatest tryscoring forward rugby league has ever known was truly unique, a ruthless and relentless poacher who put up tallies that seem impossible to grasp.

Burge played first grade rugby union at 14, switched to league at 16, and from there played 154 games in a long career with Glebe and St George, scoring a truly outrageous 146 tries. Be it for New South Wales, Australia or his beloved Dirty Reds, it didn’t matter. If Burge was playing, Burge was scoring.

Burge scored tries like no other player in rugby league history.

Switching between prop and lock for most of his career, Burge still holds the premiership record for most tries in a match (eight against University in 1920) and when he retired he was second only to Harold Horder as the most prolific tryscorer the game had seen. All these years later, just 12 more players have passed him and every one of them played at least 50 more matches.

Steve Menzies eventually overtook Burge’s record, but it took him an extra 111 games to do so. With footage scant and no surviving witnesses of his feats, the staggering volume of Burge’s achievements still sing out across the ages.

LIVE stream every game of every round of the 2018 NRL Telstra Premiership on FOX SPORTS. Get your free two-week Foxtel Now trial and start watching in minutes. SIGN UP NOW >

Originally published as Learn about Dally Messenger, Frank Burge and Dave Brown, three of the NRL’s new Immortals