1988 NSWRL season teams also competed for the 1988 Panasonic Cup. 1988 was the year of the Australian Bicentenary celebrations, and on 4 March, the season opened with the first game of rugby league played at the newly built Sydney Football Stadium. The St. George Dragons defeated the Eastern Suburbs Roosters 24–14. Easts and South Sydney would use the SFS as their home venue from 1988. This saw the end of both the Sydney Sports Ground (which closed due to the building of the SFS) and Redfern Oval as regular venues. The brand new Brisbane Broncos club, featuring Australian Kangaroos captain Wally Lewis
1988 Gilgit massacre of Parachinar, where an estimated over 200 died. The first major anti-Shia riots in Gilgit broke out in May 1988 over the sighting of the moon, which ushers the end of the holy month of Ramadan. When Shias in Gilgit celebrated Eid al-Fitr, a group of extremist Sunnis, still fasting as their religious leaders had not yet declared the sighting of the moon, attacked them. This resulted in violent clashes between Sunnis and Shias. Following a brief calm of about four days, the Pakistani military regime reportedly used a number of militants along with local Sunnis to ‘teach a lesson’