Fair Game

by Steve Cannane

  Scientology’s Bridge to Total Freedom, or ‘the Bridge’, provides a roadmap for Scientologists to achieve enlightenment through coursework and training. New recruits start at the bottom with auditing, and at the time Joe Reaiche was studying, could aspire to reach the highest rank of Operating Thetan Level VII (OT VII). The further you go up the bridge, the more expensive the courses.

  Joe Reaiche was told he would acquire supernatural powers as he made it to the top of ‘the Bridge’. Hubbard told his adherents that reaching the highest OT levels would allow them to control ‘physical matter, energy, space and time’.32 To a professional athlete, the idea that Scientology could make you somehow superhuman was an enticing prospect. But it did not quite work out that way for Reaiche. As he moved up ‘the Bridge’, his football career stalled.

  In 1980, Roosters coach Bob Fulton did not pick him in the top grade. In the off-season Reaiche went to Los Angeles and stayed in the Celebrity Centre Hotel while he completed Operating Thetan Level III (OT III). The following season, he transferred to the Canterbury Bulldogs, but struggled to dislodge established players such as Chris Anderson, Steve Gearin and Greg Brentnall, playing only one first-grade game that season.

  In 1982, Reaiche moved to Souths, playing just two games in the top grade. At the end of the year he returned to Los Angeles to complete OT IV and OT V and then to Clearwater, Florida, for OT VI and OT VII. In the world of professional sport, at the age of just 24, Reaiche was a pioneer. ‘I was the first professional playing athlete in the world on OT VII.’33

  On a high, Reaiche returned to Australia in March 1983. He did not have a contract, but turned up at his old club Easts and begun playing lower grades. Reaiche took on a job at a gym in Earlwood, where he began an association with a footballer who would become Scientology’s biggest-name convert, helping to open the door to recruiting players at one of rugby league’s most famous clubs.

  PAT JARVIS WAS A man used to putting his body on the line. As a Sydney policeman in the late 1970s and early 1980s, he patrolled the tough beat of Newtown, back in the days when the inner-city suburb was known more for its street crime than its street theatre. One of Jarvis’s tasks was to corral local hoodlums into the boxing ring at the Newtown Police Boys Club. A young Jeff Fenech was one of those street toughs who benefited from training at the club. Under the mentorship of Johnny Lewis, Fenech went on to become a world boxing champion in three different weight divisions.

  When he slipped out of his police uniform on the weekends, Pat Jarvis pulled on the red and white of St George. Tall, dark-haired and muscular, Jarvis played prop forward, a position reserved for the biggest and hardest of players. ‘Pat was as tough as nails,’ recalls his teammate Graeme Wynn. ‘He had the body of a freak. Ripples everywhere.’34 Michael O’Connor, who watched Jarvis tear into the opposition from the relative safety of the backline, remembers him as a fearless competitor. ‘Pat had no respect for his body, he would run through a brick wall. He was a very resilient, disciplined athlete.’35

  Pat Jarvis may have been notorious at St George for his ability to play through pain, but it was a case of the sniffles that triggered his interest in Scientology. When Joe Reaiche returned from doing Scientology’s upper-level courses in Florida, he landed a job in the same gym where Jarvis did weight training. The pair bonded over rugby league and Reaiche soon introduced the big front rower to Scientology.

  ‘One day I was having a chat with him,’ says Reaiche, ‘and he wasn’t feeling too good, he had a sniffle and I said, “Pat would you like me to do a process on you?” and he said, “What’s that?” I said, “Let me do it and see what you think.” I did a “touch assist” on him for 30–40 minutes and he felt better.’36

  According to Scientology doctrine, the purpose of a ‘touch assist’ is to ‘re-establish communication with injured or ill body parts’.37 The person giving the touch assist issues the command ‘feel my finger’, then places moderate pressure on the appropriate areas with one digit. The theory is that by putting the person in ‘communication’ with their injured or ill body parts, this will somehow hasten their recovery.

  After receiving his first touch assist, Jarvis asked his fellow league player what he had just done to him. ‘It’s a thing called Dianetics or Scientology,’ Reaiche replied.38 Jarvis was curious to find out more. Reaiche thought Scientology could help the St George prop forward in other ways.

  While Joe Reaiche’s ruin was his dodgy groin muscle, Pat Jarvis’s weakness was his poor ball skills. A rugby league prop forward needs to be a hard man with soft hands. When Jarvis tried to catch the football during a game, it was as if his fingers were laced with lead. While universally admired for his toughness and resilience, Jarvis’s poor handling was frustrating his coaches and preventing him from fulfilling his potential.

  Like any ambitious footballer, Jarvis was willing to try just about anything to improve his game. Reaiche took the St George player down to a local park and started practising a Scientology drill on him called ‘reach and withdraw’. ‘It works by getting you to communicate with something,’ says Reaiche. ‘The commands are “reach and withdraw”. For Pat it was about being asked to reach for that ball and once he was in complete contact with the ball, then I would ask him to withdraw from that ball.’39 The commands were repeated back and forth until Jarvis felt comfortable with the football in his hands.

  Joe took Pat under his wing. They would meet at the gym during the week where Jarvis would receive one-on-one tutoring in Scientology. The communication ball drills continued throughout the season, often at Kogarah Oval on game day when Reaiche had no commitments with Easts. Joe’s goal was to help Pat get over his fears about his ball skills, improve his general confidence as a person and turn him into an in-form footballer.

  It’s unclear whether there was something special about the Scientology drill, or whether the simple act of practising more helped improve Jarvis’s hands. Whatever it was, his teammates noticed a difference. ‘Something helped him,’ says Graeme Wynn. ‘Pat had the worst hands in the world. Then he started catching balls and running hard and he had belief in himself.’40 Halfway through the 1983 season, Jarvis’s improved form was rewarded with his selection in the Australian team to play New Zealand.

  While his sessions with Jarvis seemed to help the St George forward, Reaiche was struggling to get his own career back on track. The Roosters’ fullback Marty Gurr had been selected to play in the NSW State of Origin team that season and was keeping the Scientologist in reserve grade. Reaiche believed his own form had never been better. ‘I was playing my best football,’ he says. ‘I knew that somehow what I was doing spiritually was working in a weird way.’41

  With Reaiche starring from fullback, the Roosters’ second-grade team made a charge for the semi-finals. But the speedster was juggling divided loyalties. ‘I was getting hounded with around 15–20 calls a week from the Director of Processing at Clearwater to go there and do a “special addition” with OT VII,’ Reaiche recalls. ‘She told me it was top secret and confidential and would make my life easier and greatly help my football career immediately.’42

  The Roosters’ fullback had been convinced he could fly out of Sydney on the Monday and be back in time to play the following weekend. ‘Well guess what?’ says Reaiche. ‘I went there and all of the promises of getting me through in a half a day was all just a sales pitch and bullshit as it took me over a week to get through the course. I was now stuck and couldn’t come back in time to play. The team lost that weekend and lost the remaining two games and missed the playoffs. I felt like I let the team down big time.’43

  Reaiche had been constantly sold on the idea that Scientology courses and doctrine would improve his football; now they were preventing him from even getting on the field. He never played top-grade rugby league again.

  At the end of 1983, Pat Jarvis’s informal dabbling with Scientology came to an end. Joe Reaiche took him into the organisation’s Sydney headquarters and introduced him to
Steve Stevens. The following season the front rower was selected to play in the NSW State of Origin team for all three games. Jarvis felt his game had benefited from Scientology, but he was not letting on to his fellow players. ‘At that time Pat wasn’t known as a Scientologist,’ says his former St George teammate Chris Guider. ‘He was keeping his participation in the group a secret. He was worried about the backlash from others. His wife Anne was upset about him doing Scientology, so he wasn’t very open about it.’44

  Chris Guider joined St George at the beginning of the 1984 season and made an immediate impact. At just 162 cm and weighing 75 kg, he was one of the smallest forwards to play the code at the highest level. His teammate Steve Rogers gave him the nickname ‘Tattoo’ after the character in the TV series Fantasy Island.45 Guider was part of a new breed of hooker who was fast, agile and possessed the ball skills of a halfback.

  In Big League, former Manly second rower Peter Peters described him as ‘an amazing player’.46 Despite his size, Guider had no problems felling the biggest of opponents. His coach Roy Masters said during his debut season, ‘I haven’t coached a hooker with his all-round qualities and while his attack is excellent, so is his defence.’47

  The 22-year-old had grown up in the tough school of country rugby league. As a junior he played in Moss Vale and Tamworth, before signing to play with Maitland in the Newcastle competition. His premiership-winning coach in the Hunter, former St George centre Robert Finch, suggested he trial with his old club. Guider’s first season at St George was a success. He played 14 games in the top grade, keeping former Queensland hooker John Dowling in reserves. But towards the end of the season, health problems began to emerge. ‘He would come off after a game looking as red as a traffic light,’ recalls Graeme Wynn.48 Guider was suffering from high blood pressure and was struggling to recover after matches.

  Eventually the young hooker went to see a specialist about his high blood pressure. The news was not good. ‘The doctor told me I shouldn’t play anymore,’ says Guider. ‘He found that one of my kidneys hadn’t developed to its full size and that my other kidney had grown larger than normal to compensate. Between the two of them they functioned normally, but they said it’s risky to keep playing.’49

  Pat Jarvis was well aware of Guider’s health issues. He had packed down alongside the talented rookie in 11 matches that season. At the end of the year, as Guider weighed up his future, he received a call from his teammate:

  It was a very odd phone call because it was very clandestine. Pat’s not a great talker anyway, but he was very slow and quiet about what he was saying. He said he was going to connect me up with some sort of group that he had to be secretive about. I thought it was a bit of a joke. I just laughed and said, ‘Look mate, if you don’t have another kidney for me you’re not going to help.’50

  Soon after taking Jarvis’s mysterious phone call, Guider accepted the doctor’s advice and ended his rugby league career. It was a heartbreaking decision to make at the age of just 22. As a young boy he had dreamed of making it as a professional footballer, and in his first year in the big time, he had shown that he had what it took to be a star player. Disillusioned and distraught, Guider returned to Tamworth, dusted off his tools and took up a job as a carpenter.

  While Chris Guider had given up on his dream of playing big time rugby league, the Scientologists had not given up on him. In early 1985, Steve Stevens called him in Tamworth and tried to convince him to give Scientology a try. When his approach over the phone failed, the smooth-talking recruiter drove 400 km up the New England Highway. ‘He had hired a car and driven to Tamworth with the goal of getting me to come with him,’ says Guider. ‘He was saying that Scientology could help me, but again there was this air of secrecy which I did not like and I didn’t go.’51

  In the meantime, St George was on a roll. After 12 rounds of the 1985 competition, they were on top of the table and were emerging as favourites to win their first premiership in six years. Guider was watching their winning streak with envy from his lounge room. One cold Tamworth winter’s night he hired The Natural from his local video store. The Robert Redford film told the story of Roy Hobbs, a baseball pitcher whose sporting career was derailed after a woman shot him in a hotel room. Sixteen years later, he finally made the big time after reinventing himself as a batter.

  The Natural got under Guider’s skin. He couldn’t stop thinking about what he had given up by retiring from his own sporting career. Watching the movie was a catalyst for his comeback. ‘I just decided I was going to go back,’ says Guider. ‘I was going to move mountains. There was nothing in Tamworth for me. I didn’t want to stay there. I was going to make it happen.’52

  The former Saint was prepared to do just about anything to return to top grade rugby league. If that meant contacting the Scientologists and seeing what they could do for him, then so be it. He rang Steve Stevens, who promised to set him up in an apartment in Kings Cross. Guider packed his footy boots, mouthguard and other essential items into his car and hit the road.

  Three days after arriving back in Sydney, Chris met Pat Jarvis, Joe Reaiche and Steve Stevens at the Newtown Police Boys Club. Outside the gym the three footballers and the recruiter sat on a wall and discussed Scientology.

  Guider was given the hard sell. Reaiche told him how Scientology had helped his rugby league career. Steve Stevens introduced him to the idea of a ‘Suppressive Person’, or SP – antisocial personalities who, according to Hubbard, could affect an individual’s wellbeing. At the conclusion of their discussion, Guider agreed to undergo Scientology auditing.

  Once again Scientology had found an individual’s ‘ruin’. Like the actors who were so successfully targeted by Scientology’s Celebrity Centre, professional footballers are prone to suffering from a deep sense of insecurity. They perform in a cut-throat environment where only the best make it to the top. Their achievements and failures are subject to intense public scrutiny from fans and the media. They rely on self-confidence when they are often burdened with self-doubt. They live or die by their ability to compete under pressure on the big stage. If they do not play well, they can be dropped from the top team, or fail to have their contract renewed.

  But rugby league players have to deal with a professional hazard that makes their livelihoods even more fragile than actors. If a player is lucky, their career at the top might last eight to ten years. But at any given time, that career can be ruined by injury.

  ‘When you’re injured as a league player you’re like a leper,’ says former St George and Australian representative Brian Johnston. ‘You don’t feel like you’re a part of the team anymore. You’re not part of the group mentality, you’re not part of the emotion anymore when you win or lose and you’ll do anything to get back in the team. You’re very vulnerable to approaches from people who say they can solve your problem.’53

  By now Pat Jarvis was being more open with his teammates about his Scientology beliefs. Michael O’Connor would occasionally give Jarvis a lift to the Church of Scientology after training. ‘The building I used to drop him off at was a bit creepy,’ says O’Connor. ‘I was inquisitive about it and he explained to me about auditing and the different levels. I was very sceptical.’54

  The classy St George centre was struck by Jarvis’s dedication to Scientology. ‘He was very committed to them,’ says O’Connor. ‘He was winning player of the match awards, and then donating the prizes to the Church of Scientology.’55 Graeme Wynn remembers this causing tension between Pat and his then wife, Anne. ‘He’d win televisions and donate them to the Church of Scientology and Anne wanted him to go back in and get them.’56

  With Jarvis now more open about his beliefs, he and Stevens got to work trying to recruit other players. ‘It was a real us against them idea,’ says Guider, ‘with Steve and Pat working to get more people to see the light and come into the fold with them.’57 Brian Johnston was one of those targeted. ‘Pat had approached me when I had an injured groin,’ says Johnston. ‘I said
, “This is not for me.” I was clear. I cut him off.’58

  Graeme Wynn started to get unusual phone calls from Pat Jarvis, which he now believes were an attempt to recruit him:

  Pat used to ring me up on a Saturday night before a game and I’d be trying to have a feed, and he’d be on the phone to me trying to talk ‘positives and negatives’ and I’d be at home with my wife trying to have dinner and he’d be on the phone for half an hour. Anyway, the third Saturday in a row the phone rang and I told my wife, ‘If it’s Pat tell him I’m blind down at the Allawah pub.’59

  No-one it seems was immune from the Scientologists’ aggressive recruiting strategies. Even the coach Roy Masters was targeted. A former schoolteacher, Masters was an innovative coach who went on to became one of Australia’s most respected sports journalists. At first he was given copies of Hubbard’s books, and then given the hard sell to sign up to Scientology services. ‘I am pretty certain that Steve and Pat felt they were on the brink of getting Roy to do some auditing,’ says Guider. ‘But Steve and Pat had inflated ideas, like all Scientologists do, about their influence and how Roy was responding to them. He never mentioned the subject to me and all his communications were about the team and how we could improve it. Nothing ever about Scientology, its books or any of its ideas.’60

  It is highly unlikely that Masters even considered undergoing Scientology auditing. The St George coach had grown up in a large family known for their keen intellects and sceptical minds. His mother, Olga, was a novelist and journalist. Two of his siblings, Chris and Deb, built formidable reputations as investigative journalists at ABC TV’s Four Corners. At his first senior coaching role at Wests, Masters had taken a team of battlers and turned them into one of the most feared teams in the competition. He was renowned for using psychological tactics on his players that got the best out of them in big matches. Masters was in his early 40s, streetwise and sure of himself. He was by no means easy prey for the recruiting tactics of the Scientologists.