Brisbane gears up for battle for the city that not even the NRL could have scripted

Across all its major sporting codes, Brisbane is a one-team town.

Melbourne has its ancient Aussie rules enmities, Sydney its suburban rugby league tribes – not to mention rival teams in the round-ball game and T20 cricket. In Adelaide and Perth, clashes between crosstown AFL teams are the hottest tickets in town.

Brisbane, though, until now, has possessed nothing comparable.

So the novelty of Friday’s inaugural meeting between the Brisbane Broncos – the football club which defines the river city more than any other – and the Dolphins – the NRL’s new kids on the block – goes a long way to explaining the hype behind a derby being dubbed ‘the battle for Brisbane’.

There is also a dash of fairytale in the Dolphins’ unexpected run of wins and the Broncos’ return to imposing form after years of floundering. Then enter Wayne Bennett – founding father of the Broncos and now the Dolphins – and you have a story the league’s boardroom administrators could hardly have dared script.

The city’s cathedral of rugby league, the 52,500 capacity Lang Park, sold out days in advance. Friends are ending conversations with the ‘phins up’ catchcry as a parting salutation and patrons enter pubs with their palms pressed together, prayer-like and raised to their foreheads as if finned.

In a rabbit warren of arcade stores – op shops, two dollar stores, sellers of records and nick nacks – beside the Redcliffe jetty in Dolphins heartland, Louis Murray sells rugby league merchandise from a hole in the wall he’s run for almost 20 years.

“I’ve never seen nothin’ like it,” he says. “It’s like a Myer sale whenever you open the door now.”

From the moment they were awarded the NRL’s 17th franchise 18 months ago, Murray says the Dolphins became his