In the late ’80s, an unlikely love affair sprang up between an American rock legend and Australian sport. Tina Turner’s series of ads for rugby league reshaped public perception of the game and made the singer into a national favourite. In fact, like Senior Curator Tara Marynowsky, you may have grown up with the vague idea that Tina was an Aussie.
Tara Marynowsky, Senior Curator
Tina Turner’s ‘What You Get is What You See’ TV promotional ad for the NSW Rugby League’s Winfield Cup (1991), featuring players from the League alongside Turner singing her hit. A later version of the ad paired Aus-rock hero Jimmy Barnes with Turner in a duet version of ‘The Best’.
The campaign was a calculated attempt by the League’s management to clean up its image as violent, blokey and amateurish, and to attract female and family audiences. ‘The ads amped up the cheeky, risqué vibe yet tried to keep it wholesome for family viewers,’ says Tara. ‘It worked!’ In the space of one season, the female fan base leapt by 70%.
'What You Get is What You See': Tina Turner promotes the NSW Rugby League, TV advertisement, 1991.
This 1991 version of the ad shows all the elements that made the campaign a hit. Dressed down in denim and a cosy red turtleneck but still flashing those famous legs, Turner sings her 1986 hit ‘What You Get is What You See’ as the rugby players train, horse around, and eventually hit the field while fans yell their approval.
The objectification of the squad is half raunchy, half comical: muscles are flexed, chests are bared, but there’s also a lot of wry grins and some sweet clowning with a toddler. Women fans are explicitly put in the picture, dancing with their babies, mobbing the stars for autographs and adding their voices to the cheering crowd. The visceral crunches of the game are thrillingly conveyed: come for the physiques, stay for the tackles.
Tina Turner – seemingly ageless, swaggeringly sexy, with her fountain of hair and gravelly, twangy voice – lent her rockstar glamour to a sport crying out for a makeover. ‘She magically made rugby league cool,’ says Tara. ‘Back in the day, the primary female presence at the matches was the squads of cheerleaders with their pom-poms. Tina’s energy and sex appeal added a touch of spicy fun, and transformed those beefy players into pin-ups. More women came to watch the sport and gradually perceptions of it changed.’
So how did Turner end up in Australia? Hertz Walpole, the agency behind the campaign, wanted to use ‘What You Get is What You See’, but couldn’t imagine anyone who’d bring an appropriately Turner-ish energy to a cover of it. Luckily, a cat’s cradle of connections ran between the Australian Rugby League’s general manager, John Quayle, and Turner’s manager. Eventually it was agreed that Turner would try out a day of filming in London with two of the League’s players. It went so swimmingly that she went on to star in the full campaign, which kicked off in 1989.
In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald, Quayle paid tribute to Turner’s down-to-earth attitude. ‘No minders, no security. Her only demands were not to start too early and have a plate of fresh mango each morning. She had so much fun shooting those commercials, either on the beach or in the gym. She laughed the whole time. The players loved her.’
'Simply The Best': Tina Turner and Jimmy Barnes promote the NSW Rugby League, TV advertisement, 1992.
What could possibly be more Australian than doing a duet with Jimmy Barnes? A 1992 version of the ad featured Turner and Barnes harmonising on their cover of ‘The Best’, which had been a chart-topper for Turner in 1989. It’s a more serious and cinematic iteration of the campaign, with a gritty black-and-white intro, and more of a focus on play. It takes us inside the rooms for (rather obviously staged) pep talks from the coaches. But the focus in the crowd reaction shots is still firmly on women.
Turner – all smiles and thumbs-ups, sharing cuddles and laughs with Barnes – does indeed seem to be having a ball.
Even before Turner became the League’s celebrity-mascot (she presented the cup at the 1993 grand final), she was a familiar figure in Australian culture. Playing opposite Mel Gibson, she gave a brief but indelible performance as the post-apocalyptic leader Aunty Entity in George Miller’s Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985), and dominated the Countdown Top 10 with ‘We Don’t Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)’, the power ballad she recorded for the film’s soundtrack. But it went deeper than that: Australian children had been indoctrinated into Tina fandom for years.
It's possible to argue that in the 1970s and ’80s, the Nutbush was the national dance of Australia. Somehow, a line dance made to Turner’s song ‘Nutbush City Limits’ had made its way into school curricula, so it became widely established across the country. For Tara, as for many Aussie kids, it was the moment that got everyone on the dancefloor. ‘Engagement parties, twenty-firsts, weddings … It was like a dance cult. Even my Ukrainian babushka knew the moves.’ Turner already felt like part of the landscape, so it seemed quite natural when she became the face of rugby league.
For Tara, the Tina Turner ad is a jolt to the memory: ‘When I came across it recently, I was instantly transported back to the ’90s. It played a lot on telly!’ But the ads are more than a sign of their times. The campaign almost single-handedly opened up rugby league not only to women viewers and fans, but to the female children who would go on to become players. ‘It invigorated a sport that was maybe a bit stale,’ says Tara. ‘Now we have women playing the sport professionally. Times have changed – for one thing, we don’t have sport sponsored by cigarette companies anymore!’
The campaign sprang back to life in 2020. The pandemic scuppered plans to bring Turner back to star in new ads, but a cleverly wrought version portrayed future stars watching her ads on TV in the '90s. It also featured player Latrell Mitchell draped in the Aboriginal flag, as well as an image of Karina Brown and Vanessa Foliaki – on-field rivals and off-field couple – sharing a kiss after a hard-fought game. It ended with a little girl running outside with her ball and the slogan ‘Still the game for all’. Times have indeed changed, and the Tina Turner ads were an inciting moment.
Viewing the ads today, Tara is delighted by them. ‘Ok, they were actually a bit sexist. But refreshing, for the era. Overall, it’s such an interesting marriage of rock stardom and sport. A super-strange recipe that worked.’
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Main image: This promotional image captures the infectious joy and energy that rock superstar Tina Turner brought to her game-changing promotional campaign for the NSW Rugby League in the early 1990s.
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