High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The 1998 Illawarra Steelers season was the club`s seventeenth and final season in its history, spanning across the three competitions of the NSWRL, ARL and NRL. A home loss by a field goal to the hands of the Craig Polla-Mounter and his Canterbury Bulldogs team, plus results going against them in the final round of the regular season saw the Steelers finish 12th. Andrew Farrar`s team of hopefuls were unable to make the finals series and were put under pressure to merge or fold when the league was expected to cut the twenty-team competition down to fourteen for the 1999 season. They did eventually merge with the St. George Dragons for the start of the 1999 NRL season.