Super League at 30: What changed - and what's next?
Thirty years on from the high-profile switch, Super League is celebrating the anniversary with a round of fixtures that pay homage to its opening weekend. Leeds and Warrington will meet at Headingley on Sunday, 29 March, just as they did to help kick off the Super League era back in the mid-nineties. It was a culture shock for the players initially, though, given the speed at which the changes were introduced.
The 1995-96 season, shortened with a view to the forthcoming mayhem of the new league, had barely finished when preparations got under way for that historic first campaign. For then 19-year-old Harris, the chance to play rugby league professionally and forge a career in the sport was an opportunity he could have scarcely believed possible just years before. "It was something I was lucky enough to be part of and to play in that very first game for Warrington against Leeds," Harris continued.
"It was at Headingley, the Rhinos had just been bought by Paul Caddick and Gary Hetherington and they were becoming a very strong side and it was a special time. "It was a huge change going from a game that was two or three nights a week training with a match on the weekend, conservative contracts with guys who were working jobs alongside that, to suddenly we walk through the door on a Monday morning and 25 guys that were all on a full-time programme. "It was a huge transition for the game and from that the sport evolved very, very quickly; it got faster, players became more athletic as they had more time to work physically.
"We're seeing the benefits of that 30 years later, with the supreme athletes that we have now, and that comes from decades of full-time professionalism. " One of the big changes introduced by the Super League came in the shape of the annual Grand Final which arrived two years after the inception of the competition, and is now one of the major events in the sporting calendar. Back then, play-offs and Grand Finals were an alien concept to a nation reared on first-past-the-post league marathons - champions were decided over the course of a campaign, not by a showbiz knockout phase.
However, the mirroring of the Australian model has brought with it unforgettable moments, drama and a showpiece which has helped promote rugby league beyond its usual horizons. "Creating moments within the season is something they've got right," Harris continued. "When I first started playing it was first past the post and if you won the league you won everything.