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TheDally M Awards are the official annual player awards for theNational Rugby League competition. As well as honouring the player of the year, who received theDally M Medal, awards are also given to the premier player in each position, the best coach, the best captain, representative player of the year and the most outstanding rookie of the season. The awards are named in honour ofAustralian formerrugby league greatHerbert Henry "Dally" Messenger.
The awards were introduced in 1979 byNews Limited with the ex-gratia permission of the Messenger family. As sports historianIan Heads wrote –
In 1940, when Truth newspaper profiled his (Dally's) career and life in a 14-part series, the paper called him “the greatest player of all time ….genius of Rugby football of either code”, continuing: ”around him as the keystone in the arch, the code of rugby league in Australia was built.” Harry Sunderland, a towering, entrepreneurial figure of the game wrote: “Without Messenger’s magical appeal….there would be no league.”It is as stark as that: without Dally there may well have been no rugby league at all.[1]
News Limited journalists vote on the best performing players in each match on a 3, 2, 1 point(s) system. The scores of the voting are visible to the public and media up until Round 16 of the NRL season. In 1998, following the merger of the Super League and theAustralian Rugby League (ARL), the awards became the official awards of the newly formedNational Rugby League. Prior to 1998, the official award of the game was voted on by the referees and were known as theRothmans Medal from 1968 to 1996 and the Nokia Provan–Summons Medal in 1997. Today the Provan–Summons Medal is for the fans' "people's choice" player of the year.
Between 1979 and 1996, when both the Dally M Medal and Rothmans Medal were awarded, the same player won both awards on only three occasions –Peter Sterling in 1987,Gavin Miller in 1989 andRicky Stuart in 1993.
In 1997, when the game was split between the News Limited-organisedSuper League competition and the ARL, News Limited did not hold the awards.
The only other time the awards night has not been held was in 2003, following a dispute with theRugby League Players Association (RLPA). After the players had threatened to boycott the event unless the NRL met their demands, the NRL cancelled the Dally M awards two days prior to the ceremony.Craig Gower would have been named player of the year had the awards not been cancelled.[citation needed] Gower was subsequently awarded the inaugural RLPA Players Player Medal in recognition of his 2003 NRL season exploits, and his central role in the dispute that saw the creation of the game's first overarching workplace agreement 8 months after the boycott.
The 2014 Dally M Medal was held on 29 September 2014[2] and was won jointly byJarryd Hayne andJohnathan Thurston of theNorth Queensland Cowboys.[3] It was the first time the medal has been won jointly since its inception.
