Tony Butterfield

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Tony Butterfield (born 4 February 1966 in Penrith, New South Wales, Australia) is a former rugby league player for the Penrith Panthers and the Newcastle Knights. His position of choice was at prop-forward.

[edit] Playing career

Butterfield was signed from the Panthers reserve-grade to join the inaugural Newcastle Knights team for 1988. He remained with the Knights for thirteen seasons, retiring in 2000 as the club's most capped player - a record he later surrendered to Andrew Johns.

Butterfield was selected for one NSW Origin match; game 3, 1998.

In 1997 Butterfield was named in the Newcastle Knights Team of the Decade and again, in 2007, in the Team of the Era.^[1]

[edit] Post playing

After retiring as a player, Butterfield became the president of the Rugby League Players Association and oversaw the embarrassing situation of the Dally M Awards being cancelled in 2003. Butterfield had announced that the players would boycott the competition's major awards night if their set of demands were not met. In response, the National Rugby League called the players' union's bluff and simply cancelled the awards for that year. As the awards generally only ever attract a very small television audience, and a relatively small amount of media attention, particularly when compared to the Australian Football League's Brownlow Medal night, it is widely believed that the only losers in the whole situation were the players themselves. ^[2] Shortly thereafter, Butterfield was replaced as head of the RLPA by former Newcastle teammate Matthew Rodwell.

[edit] References

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