The Gladiators

by Norman Tasker

  As the years went by I delighted in challenging O’Gready about the photograph and the honours it had brought him. O’Gready was a knockabout bloke who loved a drink and a laugh, and I enjoyed his company. He won something like 500 pounds sterling for the photo in that international competition. I would stir him that Norm and I didn’t get a penny. ‘We posed there for hours,’ I would tell him, ‘and you won’t even buy us a drink.’ O’Gready would go into peals of laughter. And more often than not he would insist on buying a drink for longer than was good for either of us.

  NORM PROVAN

  It was normal practice at the end of a grand final for the captains to swap jumpers, so I had mine off ready to give to Arthur as we walked off. Arthur was pretty definite about it. ‘No, I don’t want it,’ he said. ‘I’m going to keep mine.’ I don’t particularly remember Arthur going crook about the referee. We had won, and that’s all I cared about. But as we have become good friends over the years on the back of that photo and the trophy that followed it, Arthur has had plenty to say about the refereeing that day. He never lets up. It’s all good-natured, but I think he is still hurting. I thought we won fair and square. I certainly don’t recall feeling that there was any doubt about it as we left the ground that day.

  I didn’t know anything about the photo until years later. I was flying overseas and I pulled the Qantas magazine out of the seat holder. There it was on the cover, bold as you like, in sepia colour. I couldn’t believe it. I read in that magazine that it had won an international award—British Sports Photo of the Year, I think. I got to know John O’Gready quite well later on. I have come to love the photo and the friendship it has led to with Arthur. John O’Gready did me a very good turn.

  •

  O’Gready was feted for his photograph of ‘The Gladiators’. It remains the most graphic sporting photo ever taken in Australia, and its renown was international. Some years after taking it, O’Gready found himself in a downtown sports bar in San Francisco, sitting alone with drink in hand. On the wall above him was a framed print of The Gladiators. He called the barman over to take due credit. ‘See that picture,’ he said. ‘I took that.’ The barman, of course, had heard it all before. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Drink up, buddy, and I’ll get you another.’

  Along with all the plaudits, O’Gready’s life had its share of tragedy. Driving home from a party one night in the late 1960s, he ran into the back of a truck and suffered life-threatening injuries. He lost an eye, and though he recovered to work at the Sun and the Sydney Morning Herald until their parent company was privatised in 1988, he never quite recaptured the glories of his days on the sideline, when he used to plough through the mud with the enthusiasm of a zealot, looking for the magic shot. He died in 1999, aged just 62. The indelible legacy that he left was ultimately sculpted into the trophy presented to the premiership-winning team at every grand final. It has been thus for 30 years, perpetuating the events of a grey afternoon long ago, when a shaft of light fell just right, and two muddied footballers symbolised the best of their sport.

  4

  CAST IN BRONZE

  THE ADAPTATION OF the Gladiators photo into the bronze statuette of the Winfield Cup, and every subsequent premiership trophy, came about by happy accident, as these things often do.

  It was the brainchild of Gary Pearse, a Rugby Wallaby with nine Tests to his credit, who was working at the time as the assistant brand manager with Winfield, part of the Rothmans cigarette group. Winfield had taken up sponsorship of the league in 1982 and were looking for a distinctive trophy that was both symbolic and readily identifiable.

  Pearse had been given contacts at several design companies. One had done the Qantas flying kangaroo logo, and all were reputable firms of long experience. The designs came by the truckload, but the focus was traditional. It was all cups and plates and the usual things, and Pearse kept looking. Flicking through a book as he sought to get a feel for the Rugby League ethos of the time, he happened upon the Gladiators photo. His face lit up. Its symbolism was everything he was looking for.

  ‘It seemed to me we wanted something that the players would identify with,’ he recalled. ‘That photo said so much about the game. The big man and the small man, the resolution of conflict, the coming together after the battle, the powerful forward and the quicksilver halfback . . . it was all there.’ The rest of the Winfield brand team could see the power of the photo too. There were only four of them all up: Pearse, Winfield marketing director Maurie Brien, David George and brand manager Ross Burgess. They decided to keep it to themselves until they had sourced a sculptor and worked out the logistics of getting it done. They didn’t even tell anyone else in the company until there was something concrete to show them.

  ‘We agreed it would be a unique trophy,’ Pearse went on. ‘To my mind the most powerful sports trophy in the world was the soccer World Cup, and that wasn’t a cup, either. If we could get this done right, we were sure it would work well.’ Pearse went looking for an artist capable of representing the Gladiators image in statue form. He was pointed in the direction of Alan Ingham, who had trained under the English sculptor Henry Moore and had to his credit a body of work that was mainly abstract images. Art being the fickle provider it is, Ingham was working as an art teacher at East Sydney and Meadowbank Technical Colleges when Pearse same calling.

  Ingham was up-front from the start. He did not normally do the sort of work that Winfield were looking for. But there was much about him that impressed Pearse, and Pearse was persuasive. Ultimately Ingham agreed to give it a shot. He got to work in his studio. He sought as many photos as he could of the two subjects, apart from the actual Gladiators shot, and began moulding in clay. Once Ingham had the basis of the work completed, Pearse decided it was time to mount his case.

  ‘We had to do a presentation to all the marketing people at Rothmans to get approval for whatever trophy we were going to use,’ he said. ‘We had a lot that had come from all the design people, and we laid all of that out first. There was some very good stuff there, but nothing that was truly special, truly distinctive. There were some nods of approval, but there certainly was no “wow” moment. Then I hit them with the Gladiators photo and the concept that Alan Ingham had been working on. They liked it. It was pretty clear from the start that we were on the right track.’

  By the time the idea had been approved and full production of the trophy had been sanctioned, the 1982 grand final was only two months away. They had six weeks to get the whole thing done. Pearse worked with Ingham through the process, including sourcing some 50-year-old mahogany for the trophy’s base. The moulds were completed and the trophy was ready for pouring by August 28, 1982. Ingham invited Pearse to join him for the final step in the making of the statuette. The pair had become firm friends through the weeks it had taken, and once the hot work of the metal pour had been done, they collapsed in front of the TV to watch the Wallabies play the All Blacks in a Rugby Test in New Zealand.

  Four years earlier, Pearse had played a Test against New Zealand in Auckland, when the Wallabies won 30–16—a then-record margin against the All Blacks. He had scored one of five tries, the other four going to his back-row partner Greg Cornelsen. Pearse had made himself unavailable for the 1982 tour—one for which he probably would have been selected, especially since a number of other prominent forwards had also declared unavailability. It was a wrench for him, especially as Australia won that afternoon with a young team in which a newcomer named David Campese was a standout.

  ‘As we completed the trophy pour, I found out Alan was a Kiwi, and he was desperate to watch the All Blacks play,’ Pearse said. ‘I had ruled myself out of the tour because I realised it was time to do some work. Rugby was very amateur then. In the end the birth of the Winfield Cup was great for me. It occupied me in a very positive way through the weeks that the Wallaby tour was on, and I did get an enormous sense of satisfaction from seeing the trophy as a finished product.’

  The last job—one that Pearse had d
elegated at the start—was to seek the approval of the two central characters of the Gladiators photo, Norm Provan and Arthur Summons. Two weeks from the appointed delivery time of the trophy, somebody realised this small detail had not been covered. Pearse went to knock on their doors. In Provan’s case it meant a trip to Cairns, where Norm and his wife Lindy had bought a business, running the Moon River caravan park. Provan had coached the Cronulla–Sutherland club through the 1978 and 1979 seasons while still running his electrical goods business, Norm Provan Discounts. The business was struggling, he had broken up with his business partner Keith Lord, and at the end of 1979 he decided to head north and do something different.

  NORM PROVAN

  When I left Sydney in 1979, I believed I had left Rugby League behind me, at least in an active way. It was a big change in lifestyle, and I admit to being a little taken aback when Gary Pearse arrived on my doorstep with the Winfield Cup idea. For a while I didn’t know what to think. Anyway, he explained it very well, and in the end I said ‘OK’ with one proviso. I did not want to be linked with any cigarette promotion—I wouldn’t do anything that promoted cigarettes. I agreed to the trophy name, but that was all. Gary gave me an undertaking that I would not be involved in advertising of any kind, and I have to say Rothmans honoured that commitment absolutely. As time went on, of course, the trophy—in all its forms—has been a wonderful thing for Arthur and me for the last 30 years. I am still part of the game because of it, and I love it.

  •

  Gary Pearse had to be quick on his feet when Provan threw the cigarette proviso at him. He sought and was given firm undertakings from the company back in Sydney that the request would be honoured. The trophy ultimately was ready for its initial presentation at the 1982 grand final, to Parramatta captain Steve Edge.

  Summons and Provan were on deck that day, feted as the new symbolic centrepiece of the game. Summons recalls having to pinch himself, so surreal did the whole affair seem.

  ARTHUR SUMMONS

  I didn’t know what to think when Gary Pearse put the proposal to us about making a premiership trophy out of the Gladiators photo. I remember I was exhilarated. Even that we were considered for such a thing seemed like a tremendous honour, a staggering position to be in. It was surreal that a photo snapped at a moment like that could lead to all this. Even now, the recognition factor of the photo and the trophy is unbelievable. I am bailed up on buses, in the street. I am asked for autographs by kids whose grandfathers would have been playing in my day. As for the game itself, Norm and I have both been embraced in ways that were simply unimaginable when we stopped playing. We get invited to so many things, we are asked to be in promotions and presentations . . . it is simply wonderful to still be involved.

  The active involvement was happening all the time early on. It has become a bit more subdued in recent years, but it still happens. When the League celebrated the centenary year they even made us part of the TV commercial. We dressed up in our club jumpers, and the makeup people muddied us up as best they could. It was pretty hard to match the natural job the weather did back in 1963, though. We did the filming at Birchgrove Oval, where the first club game was played back in 1908, and it felt weird. We don’t quite look like we did back then, but in a strange way it all came rushing back. When you get in situations like that you can only shake your head and wonder how it can be happening, after so many years.

  At the grand final that year they delivered the Telstra Premiership trophy by helicopter, with Norm and I and Cameron Smith and Greg Inglis standing on the centre of the field waiting to receive it. That was perhaps the most surreal moment of all, with the draught from the helicopter nearly blowing us off our feet and 80 000 people in the ground cheering us on. A very different scene to 1963, and all because a photographer happened to capture one magic moment.

  •

  The establishment of the Winfield Cup triggered a revolution in Rugby League. It also put Provan and Summons at the forefront of the game’s transformation from a suburban Sydney competition—albeit a very intense one—into a modern, national, television-driven public entertainment. By modern standards, when television sponsorship deals can be worth a billion dollars or more, the initial Winfield one was quaintly small—$250 000 for the competition and another $125 000 for State of Origin and Test matches. All up not even half a million dollars, yet considered at the time an absolute windfall.

  ‘It didn’t stop there,’ Pearse said. ‘Winfield were determined to push the game to new heights—making the big game bigger was not just a slogan, it was the way they worked. They would have spent at least another half-million dollars on all the ancillary things—photo shoots, big-game entertainment, advertising, exotic promotions. They were determined to make the whole thing work.’

  The timing for the establishment of the Winfield Cup and the imagery of its trophy was fortuitous. By 1983, Rugby League was in turmoil. The sponsorship had been launched under the regime of the then League president Kevin Humphreys, whose support for it was unconditional. At the trophy launch, he had spoken glowingly of the ethos embodied in the statuette. He wrote in the official program, Big League:

  The Winfield Cup trophy has been presented as a symbol portraying aspects and characteristics that apply to all players of the Big Game. The Big Game is about losing as well as winning; it is about big men and not so big men; it is about forwards and backs; it is about support for a teammate; it is about friendship; it is about acknowledging the skill and dedication of others. The Winfield Cup is put forward as an ultimate symbol of Australian sportsmanship.

  By 1983, Rugby League found itself at the centre of a corruption scandal that had been the subject of a Four Corners television investigation and was so far-reaching in its aftermath that even the NSW government was brought under a searing spotlight. For the game, the result ultimately was a passing of the baton from Humphreys to the Manly supremo Ken Arthurson, the abandonment of the old, parochial system of governance in which the league’s general committee gave a voice to all clubs in favour of a select board, and the appointment of John Quayle as the league’s general manager. On the back of the Winfield involvement and its flagship trophy, these developments triggered a marketing and promotional drive that sent the game soaring to a whole new level.

  The advertising campaigns became professional and expensive, the slogans catchy and memorable. ‘The Boys are Back in Town’, ‘What You See is What You Get’ and ultimately the biggest of them all—‘Simply The Best’. The big grand final shows became ever more spectacular. A young David Atkins, who later produced the opening and closing ceremonies at the Sydney Olympics and the Vancouver Winter Olympics, cut his production teeth on the grand final shows, one of which featured a carefully choreographed performance by 300 dancers. Everything the league did started to showcase its surging status as a professional public entertainment of the highest order.The old suburban game was transformed, TV audiences and match attendances surged. And at the centre of it all was a trophy representation of two old foes, reflecting on a hard afternoon in the mud.

  ‘There is no doubt that they were exciting times,’ John Quayle reflected, ‘and there is also no doubt that hitting upon Norm and Arthur as an important symbol of all of that was a master stroke. The game developed terrific momentum. It really took off when we hit on the Tina Turner involvement. That became a global thing. We bought the Southern Hemisphere rights to “Simply the Best” before it was released, and once we got Tina involved with the boys—well, it was something else.’

  The deal with Turner had been done in 1989, when the league’s advertising agency had picked up the rights to the song ‘What You See Is What You Get’. But when it came time to make commercials, they realised it was almost impossible to get anybody to sing it the way Tina Turner sang it. Turner’s manager happened to be in Melbourne, so Quayle flew to see him and put the case for her to play a role in a Rugby League marketing campaign. There was a lot of money involved, but Quayle plunged in. Then he had to
sell the idea to a jittery president, Ken Arthurson, who ran his eye over what looked like telephone numbers, gulped, and told Quayle to ‘go for it’.

  Quayle took off for London, where Turner recorded what they needed, then joined a bevy of Australia’s most presentable players of the day to make some stunning commercials. They were a phenomenal success. When ‘Simply the Best’ was about to be released a year or two later, Turner’s manager was on the phone to Quayle to ask if the league would like a piece of it. It was perfect. Turner recorded a special version with Jimmy Barnes and it became a Rugby League anthem, one of the most successful sports promotions of all time.

  Tina Turner was a guest at the 1993 grand final. She performed on stage and afterwards presented the Winfield Cup to Brisbane captain Alfie Langer. Nobody was ever quite sure how much she appreciated the mysteries of Rugby League football, but in impact terms she did almost as much for Rugby League as Dally Messenger had done in 1908, when he switched from Rugby Union to play the new game and gave it its initial impetus. ‘Simply the Best’ was played everywhere, whistled and hummed by millions, and every time it was heard people made the natural association with Rugby League. By the early 1990s, the Winfield Cup was a more recognisable symbol of Australian sport than the Melbourne Cup.

  In the aftermath of the Tina Turner campaigns, the Winfield association had done so much for Rugby League and for the company that both parties were keen to sign a ten-year agreement. But dark clouds were gathering. Concern abut the risks of smoking was raising barriers everywhere, and governments, having already banned direct advertising, were now under pressure to close the sponsorship loophole as well. Quayle sought out the view of NSW Premier Nick Greiner and Prime Minister Bob Hawke. They wanted cigarette-company sponsorship of sport to end by 1992. Hawke, a sports nut, was sympathetic but realistic. ‘Mate,’ he told Quayle, ‘you’re not gunna win.’ Eventually the government gave sport in general three years to do away with the sponsorships, but the die was cast. At the end of the 1995 season, the Winfield Cup would be no more. It was not the end of the Provan–Summons relationship, however. The Winfield company gave the league rights to the imagery of the Gladiators statuette, which it gratefully accepted. The dark winds of Super League were gathering at the time, but the league had the trophy reconfigured as the Optus Cup, and ultimately the Telstra Trophy, and the classic pose has been perpetuated over more than 30 winters so far.