Forget the ‘spine’ players. This position is now the most important in rugby league

August 9, 2026 — 5:00am

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The individual positions on a rugby league field, like George Orwell’s animals, have never been equal – either in reward or recognition.

In his political satire Animal Farm, published in 1945, Orwell wrote that “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others”, referring to pigs as the privileged class. Back then, “pig” was also a popular term for a rugby league forward. The front-rower, in particular, was the dominant position on the muddy fields that dominated in those days.

Props, as they were also called, butted heads in scrums and raked shins in the play-the-ball. Some even chewed ears – and we are not talking corn. However, they grunted their way forward with ball skills under a zero-yard rule with no tackle limits and no replacements allowed.

Whereas Orwell’s pigs, in the author’s fable about Communist Russia, changed the rules to give themselves more power, the administrators of rugby league changed the rules of the game to take away power from the front-rowers. The most obvious was to render scrums non-competitive, while other tweaks to the laws over the last 70 years have seen certain positions become more important than others.

Today, it is the spine players – the halves, hooker and fullback – who are perceived as the most valuable. Yet, when the spines of two opposing teams are approximately equal in talent, another position has emerged as critical to success. So, who are these difference makers in the coming semi-finals, if the spines of opposing teams cancel each other........

© The Age