Packer was in a league of his own

What Kerry Packer wanted, he usually got and rugby league was no different.

Packer, whose influence on rugby league was central to the code's amazing rise in popularity through the early 1990s, died at his Sydney home on Monday night, aged 68.

Packer's desire to have rugby league broadcast on his Nine Network was never more evident than when he bought the league rights back from entrepreneur Alan Bond - at a fraction of the price.

"I want it forever," Packer said at the time.

"I reckon rugby league and cricket as far as I'm concerned are the two great sports in Australia."

Channel Nine revolutionised the way rugby league was broadcast, but Packer's desire for control also brought the code to the point of collapse.

It was his battle with fellow media mogul Rupert Murdoch, chief of News Corp, which brought the game to its knees during the great ARL-Super League war of the mid-to-late 1990s.

Then ARL general manager John Quayle recalled how Packer had addressed the chief executives of all the clubs at ARL headquarters back in 1995.

"He said: 'I'm here because I hear someone wants to buy your game - well, if anyone wants to buy your game, I'll buy it. I've got a television contract and if anyone tries to give that up I'll sue their arses off'," Quayle remembered Packer saying.

Super League chief executive John Ribot remembers the meeting well.

"He had everyone shaking in their shoes when he came walking into the room," he recalled.

"We were left with a firm understanding of what he was going to do.

"He said he'd come after us personally and he was the last bloke I wanted coming after me."

For three years the fiercest battles in rugby league were played in the courts instead of on the field, with a peace deal finally brokered on December 19, 1997, with Channel Nine again gaining control of the game's television rights.

The man by his side for much of the war, ARL chairman Ken Arthurson, paid tribute to Packer's amazing legacy in rugby league.

"He played a major role in the success of rugby league during that period in the '90s, when rugby league was really on top," Arthurson said.

"We had every sport on the back foot at that stage, it was really going great guns and I must say that was really due to a large extent to the Kerry Packer influence with Channel Nine.

"I'll always think of him, not only as one of the most astute businessmen that this country has ever had, but he was a great sportsman, and that was probably the major thing that he and I had in common was our mutual love of sport."