Despite the cultural importance of sporting organizations, little academic attention has been paid to the legitimizing role of their annual reports. In this paper we examine the role of annual reports in establishing the legitimacy of a new organization, the Queensland Rugby Football League (QRFL), founded in 1908. Contextualized with media reports from newspapers of the day, 12 annual reports from QRFL's first 25 years are analysed and interpreted using insights from legitimacy theory. Through the presentation of audited financial statements and persuasive narrative accounts of its operations and success, QRFL made claims to pragmatic, moral and cognitive legitimacy as it sought to establish a niche as a new football code and organization. This contextualized study situates the annual reports in their historical landscape, providing insights about how they contributed to QRFL's efforts in overcoming the liability of newness in a competitive sports environment.

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