"Albo" was there, of course, sitting with the South Sydney faithful.

But the only Labor politicians in the special function room were three NSW parliamentarians.

Labor has effectively divorced itself from rugby league, preferring to embrace AFL.

So why mention this now, seven months after the grand final?

Two reasons. It's budget time, the relevance of which will be apparent later.

Secondly, the pages of newspapers I read while researching the lead-up to the Gallipoli anniversary, illustrate how far the "worker's party"  has separated itself from the working class game.

The Referee newspaper published a story on April 29, 1914, titled "The Playground of Politicians". It reported that the NSWRFL, which had been formed only six years earlier, had become "allied" with politics and in particular the Labor Party and the NSW government. James Joynton Smith, Member of the Legislative Council (MLC), was League president, and Fred Flowers, MLC and NSW Minister for Health, the League's vice -president.

It noted that in February 1914, Henry Hoyle, one of the founders of the NSWRFL and its first president, was elevated to the ministry in NSW, becoming assistant treasurer.

Ted Larkin, the League secretary, had just been elected to the seat of Willoughby, the first time Labor had won on the North Shore.

When Flowers, who became NSWRL president, died in1928, Joe Lamaro, a barrister of Sicilian parents and president of the University rugby league club, and NSW delegate on the Australian Rugby League Board of Control, was the favourite to succeed him.

Lamaro was the Labor candidate for the NSW seat of Enmore who was driven around polling booths on election day by his good friend, Charles Kingsford Smith.

Lamaro won Enmore but Jersey Flegg, the ex-player and official with Eastern Suburbs Roosters, who worked with the Water, Sewerage and Draining Board, won the vote. Lamaro went on to become a highly-controversial attorney-general who was a close confidante of Premier Jack Lang.

Labor came to rugby league's rescue after World War II with the Minister for External Affairs, Dr Herbert Evatt, arranging for the stranded English team to hitch a ride to Australia aboard the English aircraft carrier Indomitable.

In 1943, on being elected patron of the ARL, Evatt promised to do everything he could to "advance the interests of a great game".

Sir William McKell, a fanatical Rabbitohs fan and Labor premier, was simultaneously patron of the NSWRL and governor-general.

Ron McAuliffe was an ALP senator for a decade and in 1984 became the first Queenslander to be voted a life member of the ARL.

Virtually every Sydney club had a prominent federal Labor politician in the 1980s with John Brown at Parramatta; Graham Richardson, Doug McClelland and Gary Punch with the Dragons; Kerry Sibraa and Mick Young passionate about Manly; Paul Keating and the Stewart brothers at Canterbury; Fred Daly with Newtown; Laurie Brereton and his sister, Deidre, active at Souths; Ross Free supporting the Panthers.

When Wests president "King Billy" Carson, a lover of Bob Menzies, encouraged the club to attend a meet and greet with Liberal Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, most players and committeemen refused.

Dr Stephen Martin, a former referee, Labor Speaker and Illawarra Steelers board member, helped establish a federal parliamentary group interested in the code.

It dissolved during the Super League war and, although resurrected in recent years, its most vocal members are probably Libs.

Michael Cleary, a former NSW Labor sports minister and rugby league international, sits on the NRL Appeals Committee and NRL chief executive Dave Smith insists his code is bipartisan.

However, most of the financial support for the game in recent years has come from the Coalition, with $600 million allocated by the NSW government to rectangular stadiums in Sydney.

This follows a decade where the AFL received $2 billion in public funding for stadiums, including investment in two bases for the GWS Giants at Blacktown and Homebush.

Neither the AFL nor NRL are expected to receive anything at the forthcoming budget but the Giants' No.1 fan is shadow treasurer Chris Bowen, member for the western Sydney seat of McMahon.

The Giants share the same colours as Wests Tigers, whose western territory borders Bowen's electorate.

Those Magpies who refused to meet Fraser now accept that the Liberals are more likely to fund a new rectangular stadium at Campbelltown than Labor, the party once identified with the beginnings of the game. 

• LeagueHQ