ABC Grandstand's Unsung Sporting Heroes

by ABC Grandstand

  His captaincy record speaks for itself: seven wins, sixteen losses and seven draws. Anybody who could manage as many draws as wins in a career could retire as a contented and decorated leader. (Forget the sixteen losses, for they are of no consequence.) Richie Benaud is close, with twelve wins and eleven draws; Allan Border was hopeless, with only one draw amongst eight wins; and Bradman was far from perfect, with just six draws and fifteen wins. Disgracefully, Ian and Greg Chappell between them managed fewer draws than wins or losses. And now it seems Slasher will never have his peer, since the fine art of crafting a draw has been lost, and with modern covers and water-hogging technology, even the ‘rain-enforced’ draw is sadly rare.

  Slasher was instantly recognisable as an icon. His hair was crinkled, flecked with grey that was barely discernible on a black-and-white TV and set in Brylcreemed permanence, and used as a paradigm by many Australian mothers whose sons were sporting Beatles’ ‘moptops’. His rugged face would slowly reveal more lines over several days on a wearing pitch. And his mouth endlessly, slowly, masticated. He started the fashion for gum-chewing that has since become a convention, but he did it with a stately dignity and with his mouth closed in a way that also inspired the respect of mothers.

  The watershed for Mackay, as for world cricket, came in December 1960, when the West Indies toured Australia. Benaud’s determination to play ‘bright’ cricket was the death knell to the revered draw. What Slasher thought of the word ‘bright’ as he sat philosophically lacing up his boots for the first Test we will never know, but by the last over of that game he must have been horrified by each ball as it passed. Seven runs to get from eight balls with only four wickets standing? Win? You’ve got to be joking. The strategy required by the situation was obvious — ‘play for the draw’, of course. It defied not only tradition but simple common sense to do otherwise. But Benaud had other thoughts and a tie resulted.

  Mackay had his revenge in the Fourth Test, at Adelaide, which held Australians riveted to their radios for an agonising two hours. It left Slasher on sixty-two not out after 223 minutes, and Australia nine for 273. That heroic last wicket stand of 109 minutes with Lindsay Kline, which led to a nail-biting draw, is now glorious history. The front cover of next day’s paper showed Slasher pointing stoically to the bruises on his chest.

  Since W.G. Grace, cricket has had many cult figures. Australians think of the bovine, moustachioed Max Walker; the English of Ian ‘Beefy’ Botham, all beer, belches and paunchy bravado. But they are the stuff of adolescent naïvety compared with Ken ‘Slasher’ Mackay, the greatest idol of them all.

  Vic Ludwig

  by Charlie King

  VIC’S FATHER, HEINRICH Ludwig, heard the drums of war long before anyone else. In 1910 he was working across the German border at the coal mines in the Polish town of Chorgan, when he decided he wanted to move as far away as possible from his home country, Germany. He had heard stories from other miners about a country called Australia that offered opportunities and assistance with travel. It is not clear how this working-class miner was able to arrange the trip, but he and his young wife, Martha, found passage on a freighter and set off for a new life. His decision to move to Australia would, in years to come, lead to the formation of one of the most successful Australian Rules football clubs in the country.

  The Ludwig family settled in Bundaberg, probably attracted by the European sound of the town’s name, and set out to grow vegetables on an acreage some sixteen kilometres from the town. Life was tough. The family eventually grew to six children, with Victor Samuel Ludwig being the youngest, born just before his father died in 1928. Long walks to town and school were demanding and money was always in short supply.

  The family moved throughout Queensland, always in search of better opportunities, and Vic learned early about hard work, discipline and respect. These virtues were to stand him in good stead later in life and when he found an interest in sport through rugby league and, later, Australian Rules football. Even at a young age, Vic took great pride in what he did and was driven by the need to be good at whatever he tried his hand at.

  The family moved from Gladstone to Mt Isa in 1948 because the mining town offered good working opportunities and rugby league was played on weekends. Vic grabbed both prospects enthusiastically and gained a reputation as a good worker and a talented fullback.

  Work at the mine also presented Vic with his first contact with Indigenous people and racism. His working partner at the time was an older Indigenous man who worked just as hard as Vic and who one day was sacked without explanation. It left a lasting impression.

  Then in February 1948, the lead bonus strike shut the mine down and, with workers and the mining company refusing to negotiate, most of the town was unemployed. Work prospects in the region were limited. Vic had heard of a gold mine in Tennant Creek that might be hiring and convinced four of his mates to travel to the Territory town. What they found was disheartening: a small town, a small mine and no work. All the men had heard about Darwin after the war-time bombings in 1942, so they decided to try their luck there instead.

  Darwin’s population in 1948 was about 2500 and the town still showed signs of the bombings that had taken place six years earlier. Sunken ships lying on their sides were still visible in the harbour; hastily patched bomb-scarred walls were undergoing more permanent repairs and junk-made cottages sat alongside town houses. Bomb craters could be seen in most parts of the town and the roads were in a state of disrepair. The heavy wet season didn’t help matters. The town cried out for workers.

  And so it turned out. Within two days of arriving, the four men had all secured jobs. Vic, who adjusted his age up to twenty-one in order to attract the full wage, was given a job repairing storm-water drains and road guttering. His mine work experience in concreting then landed him the plum job of leading hand. He was part of the Roads workforce and his work area stretched from Darwin to Hayes Creek, some 150 kilometres away. The labour shortage in Darwin at that time also meant there was ample opportunity to learn other skills. Vic seized the chance and, in a short while, became a truck driver and a plant operator. Although he didn’t know it at the time, they were handy skills for later in life.

  Australian Rules football is played in the Top End of the Northern Territory between October and February/March. This period is always referred to as the ‘wet season’. A shortage of ovals and the need to play cricket during the drier months is often given as the reason for footy being played out of whack with other parts of Australia. There were about two hundred working men left over from war-time and cricket seemed to be their main sporting interest.

  When Vic arrived in Darwin the footy season had already ended and the town was between seasons, waiting for the rain to end so cricket could get started. Vic and his mates, who were all sports minded, played cricket but Vic’s heart wasn’t really in it and he longed for rugby league. There was no rugby league competition in Darwin in 1948 and there had not been since 1943, when the army and navy personnel were shipped out. It was not until 1950 that rugby league was revived, but by then Vic had found passion for another sport.

  In September 1949 the Australian Rules season got underway, and Vic and his mates decided they’d give it a go. None of them really knew the game but the idea of playing was appealing. There were three teams in the Darwin competition at the time: Wanderers, Darwin and Waratahs. The competition was strong and well organised, which was not surprising given that an organised competition had been running since 1917. Darwin (otherwise known as the Buffaloes) had beaten Wanderers in the last two grand finals, so Vic’s decision to try out with Waratahs was probably more about securing a game than helping out a weaker team. Whatever his thinking, it was to no avail because he and his mates were told rather quickly by the Waratah coach that they were not wanted and that it was unlikely that they would get a game.

  His interest in playing football must have waned after the rejection by the Waratah Club, because it wasn’t until season 1951/52 that
he tried to join a club again. This time he must have felt confident, because Works and Housing, who he now worked for, had entered a team in the Darwin competition. He attended training regularly but, again, the selectors failed to pick him. So he spent the season on the bench, and waited for the dry season and cricket.

  It was also during 1951 that Vic met and married Sadie McGuinness. Sadie was the daughter of Jack and Violet McGuinness, and they were a well-known Darwin Indigenous family. It was a marriage that was to last until Sadie died in 2013.

  Vic’s life had already gone through many changes since arriving in Darwin and, although he wasn’t aware of it, the coming football season was about to bring another change that would one day lead to him being the longest-serving football administrator in Australia. The 1952/53 season saw a new team, St Marys (also known as the Saints), enter the competition. This team was created with the sole purpose of giving Aboriginal players, especially the Tiwi Islands men who had come to Darwin for work, the opportunity to play football. No other clubs at the time permitted full-blooded Aboriginals to join.

  Driven by the need to prove to the clubs that rejected him that he could play football, Vic decided to try out for St Marys. He mistakenly thought that Aboriginal men weren’t suited to footy, so he figured his chances of getting a game were pretty good. At his first training session he noticed that there were only about a dozen players out on the field but there were about twenty Aboriginal men watching around the ground. He joined the training group and did the sprints and laps as required. And then the balls came out. All of a sudden the men who were watching were all out on the ground, and what he saw, he’d never forget. They were big, strong, lean and fit — the most skilful footballers he had ever seen. They could sprint, they could mark and they played as if the game was made for them. Vic was in awe. Although he never did get to play football for St Marys, he found a level of passion for the game and the team that was to last him the rest of his life.

  Though training with St Marys was Vic’s first real contact with Aboriginal people other than his wife’s family, he was brought up to be respectful of everyone and got on well with his fellow footballers, developing some lifelong friendships.

  St Marys had on-field success almost immediately and played finals football regularly, winning their first premiership in the 1954/55 season. The Tiwi men proved themselves to be great players and were regarded as the most skilful in the expanding Darwin Football League. There were many attempts to poach them from St Marys, but in the main they stayed loyal to the club that had given them the opportunity to play in the first place.

  Vic, meanwhile, had a brief stint with the RSL club in the Darwin Rugby League as their president, and in his first year in the role delivered the club a premiership. He also continued to be involved with St Marys: he was on their committee for the next twelve years, during which time they won five premierships. His job at Works and Housing was going well, and he and Sadie were raising a young family. And of course there was still football. Sadie’s family were staunch Darwin Buffalo supporters; Vic’s workmates were involved with the Works and Housing team and Vic was a Saints man. The rivalries persist today.

  In 1964 Vic was elected St Marys’ president. He was thirty-six years old, enthusiastic and ambitious, and he knew success on the field would lead to success off the field. He had tasted premiership glory with the RSL club and was already envisaging more premierships and, more importantly in his mind, a clubhouse for St Marys. He was confident the premierships would come but the clubhouse was a much bigger task. No sporting club in Darwin had its own clubhouse at that time, and Vic felt that in order to be successful, a home base was a must-have. His plan was simple: win premierships, attract sponsors, raise money and build a clubhouse.

  The first goal was achieved almost immediately, with the Saints winning the grand final in 1964 against Works and Housing (now Nightcliff). Vic set about looking at ways the club could raise money on the back of their win. He eventually came up with the idea of bingo, and got permission for the club to run sessions at different venues around Darwin, sometimes as many as three a week. He also organised fashion parades, raffles, social functions, mini flea markets, and even sold discarded clothing from major stores. All raised good funds — but not enough to build a clubhouse.

  Over the next forty-three years Vic continued to raise much-needed funds for the club and never lost sight of what he was aiming for. He worked for twenty years with Works and Housing and a further twenty years with a concrete supply firm, all the time developing relationships with people in the building and construction industry. When land became available at the Marrara Sports Complex, Vic ensured that St Marys was at the head of the queue for allocation. Having successfully acquired some land, he began calling on mates and favours, and was able to construct a clubhouse for half of what it should have cost. He took on the role of construction supervisor; he operated graders and plant equipment and he used players and supporters to help, especially those with trade skills. He, and the committee, had raised about half of what they needed to build the clubhouse, with the other half coming from grants, and today they have a home base the equal of any.

  Vic Ludwig was president of St Marys from 1964 to 2005. In that time the club won a total of seventy-one premierships: nineteen senior premierships; ten in reserve grade; sixteen in the under-eighteens; fifteen in the under-sixteens; and eleven in the under-fourteens. The senior team only missed the finals twice and never held a wooden spoon.

  There is no doubt that Vic has been the prime mover in building a highly successful club. It is unlikely that any other individual in Darwin has managed to develop a relationship with Indigenous people the way he has. The end result has been many opportunities for players at all levels of Australian football, including the great Tiwi Island player David Kantilla, who was the first full-blooded Aboriginal to play state representative football for South Australia. Some other notable AFL players who started their careers in St Marys include Maurice, Dean and Cyril Rioli; Xavier and Raphael Clarke; and Michael Long.

  Vic has always been a selfless man of great commitment and generosity and has dedicated a lifetime to his passion. It would not be an exaggeration to state that thousands of people have benefited in some way from the efforts of Vic Ludwig, and from the decision that Heinrich Ludwig made to leave Europe way back in 1910.

  The Phantoms

  by Kerry Jones

  IN 2007, WHEN my son, Alexander, was in Year Seven, he and his mates Joe, Bob, Ollie, Josh, Daniel and Tim took up volleyball. This was quite a surprise to their parents — growing up in the seaside town of Narooma, on the south coast of New South Wales, they were all surfers and footy and soccer players. They had never played indoor sport.

  It began when a teacher called Chris Nunn came to Narooma High School. He was from Victoria and had a passion for volleyball. It wasn’t long before he had an enthusiastic group of students playing and training. His goal was to take the three older teams to the Australian Volleyball Schools Cup in Melbourne at the end of the year. The teams became known as the Phantoms (after Chris’ favourite comic-strip character). The Year Seven boys’ team were to go the following year, as Chris felt that the boys were too young and inexperienced to go down to Melbourne and compete in such a massive competition.

  In order to gain the experience they needed, Chris and the players’ parents would drive the teams down to Bega and back (a 168-kilometre round trip) every Thursday night to compete in the Bega volleyball competition. Then, in December 2008, the Phantoms finally got the chance to go to Melbourne, where they had a fabulous time gaining much-needed match experience. Fired up, the boys returned home, determined to do better the following year.

  But on their return to school for Year Nine, they found that Chris had moved back to Victoria and none of the other teams wanted to continue with volleyball. Alexander and his friends were on their own.

  Undaunted by the fact that they no longer had a coach, they decided they would
train, and raise the money to go to Melbourne to compete in the Schools Cup, by themselves.

  And that is what they did. Every Monday afternoon, they stayed back after school and trained for two hours, using the drills that Chris had taught them. Every Thursday night they travelled to Bega to compete, sometimes not getting home until 11 o’clock. On weekends and during school holidays they sold raffle tickets outside the supermarket and at the monthly Narooma Markets to raise money. They even got up at 5 a.m. every morning for the three days of the Great Southern Blues Festival, held in Narooma, to rake up all the cans and rubbish left strewn around the tents by the revellers, which earned them another five hundred dollars towards their trip.

  Their fundraising efforts were so successful that, in the end, they managed to raise over $3500, which was enough to fund the entire trip for all seven of them, without any help from their parents. They even budgeted ten dollars a night each for dinner at the Italian restaurant Chris had introduced them to the previous year.