The Gladiators

by Norman Tasker

  The trophy had its issues from the start. Originally it was too heavy to lift, so the base was hollowed out. Then the Canberra five-eighth Laurie Daley dropped it off the back of a truck after a long night celebrating the club’s 1989 victory. He managed to separate the Provan and Summons figures—something time has never done—and serious repairs were required. But the trophy lives to this day.

  5

  FAME AND INFAMY

  THE 1963 GRAND FINAL between St George and Western Suburbs was one of the more memorable season’s deciders, and not just for the celebrated after-match photograph. The conditions of the day, for one thing: players sank to their ankles in deep mud as soon as they took the field. Saints were chasing their eighth title in a row, and their team boasted half a dozen of the greatest names the game has known. And then there was the infamy.

  As they gathered in the dressing room to prepare for the game, Wests’ senior players were told the dice had been loaded against them. The referee had backed St George, came the message, and he would not let them win. The match confirmed their fears, and the years since have only entrenched the view that the game was stolen from them. Arthur Summons certainly has no doubt.

  ARTHUR SUMMONS

  Players of my generation often whinge about the way the game has changed, and how it has lost some of the magic that they treasured. In some areas it probably has. But other areas have improved dramatically, and one of them is refereeing. I’m not necessarily saying that the referees are better as individuals. But the system is so much better. Errors that used to blight us in my day are almost impossible with two referees on the field, two touch judges with microphones and a bloke watching the game on a TV monitor, with the help of a dozen or more cameras and slow-motion replays. The scrutiny is fierce.

  Better still, that scrutiny makes it almost impossible for a referee to fit you up. Back in the ’60s, we were not always confident that was the case. We had suspicions that some referees—one in particular—sometimes had a more than passing interest in the result. To this day I am convinced that the result of the 1963 grand final was subject to outside influence, and it sill hurts. I walked into the dressing room before that game very confident. We had a top side, we had the experience of two grand finals against Saints in the previous two seasons, we had beaten them three times in that year, the conditions were in our favour and we thought we had the tactics to shut them down. Then Jack Gibson gave us the real news.

  Jack was a tough front-rower who had joined us that year and added some sting to what was a very forceful pack of forwards. He was always a tough guy. He worked as a bouncer at a two-up school, so he had strong links to the illegal gambling industry that flourished in Sydney in those days. When money changed hands in the dark dealings that surrounded Rugby League games, Jack usually heard about it. ‘Darcy has put 600 quid on St George,’ he told us. ‘We can’t win.’ Darcy Lawler had been refereeing grand finals since the early 1950s.When he wanted to be, he was a very good referee, clearly better than all the rest. He was firm and direct and he kept tight control. But it was also common knowledge that he was a gambler, and as a referee he was in a very good position to gamble on sure things. It was fair to say that most of us regarded playing under Darcy Lawler as a bit of a lottery.

  When Gibson gave us his story, I just couldn’t believe it. Surely not in a game as important as this one. But Gibson said he had no doubt. He knew the bloke who put the money on. I tried to put it out of my mind. If we were good enough, I thought, we could get over the referee as well as Saints. I’m not sure I believed it.We kept the news among the top three or four senior players so that it didn’t become a self-fulfilling prophecy for everybody else, and we went out and gave it everything.

  The game was hard and tough and Saints were a masterful team, but to this day I reckon we would have won but for Lawler. The penalty count was 18–7 against us. And Ian Walsh ended up with a 24–12 margin in the scrums against our hooker Noel Kelly, who had beaten him every other time we played. Lawler wouldn’t leave Noel alone. With that sort of possession—and remember, this was in the days of unlimited tackles—prising a game away from Saints was virtually impossible.

  But even then we might have won but for a couple of decisions that were crucial. We were down 5–3 in the second half when their winger Johnny King made a break and our fullback Don Parish pulled him down. He jumped straight to his feet and ran on, was pulled down again and ran on again to score. I swear to this day I heard Lawler yell ‘Play it’ when Parish put King down. So did others, and we momentarily relaxed.

  There was a lot of argument about that, and I can see that King might not have been held for long enough. But the referee’s call stopped us, and that was the key point. If he called ‘Play it’, King should have been made to play the ball. Another crucial turning point came when I put a cross kick into the Saints’ in-goal. It was a thing we planned over and over. Nobody kicked much in those days, and we worked out that a few kicks in behind the line were the best chance we had of breaking the Saints defence. I kicked from the scrum and it was near perfect.

  Our big centre Peter Dimond raced at the ball as the Saints defenders struggled to turn in the mud. He threw himself at it, got his hands to the ball and leapt in the air to celebrate what we all assumed was a fair try. Darcy Lawler arrived and simply waved it away. I remonstrated with Lawler. ‘Turn it up, Darcy, how can that not be a try?’ I moaned. ‘Another word and you’re in the showers,’ he replied. There was no rhyme nor reason to a lot of the decisions made against us that day. At one point Jack Gibson got into holts with Norm Provan, and as they wrestled around in the mud Lawler threatened Gibson with a send-off. Gibson let Darcy know he knew about the 600 quid, and said he’d give him up if he took matters any further. Lawler packed a scrum.

  I know after all these years it seems a bit paranoid to be raking over all this again, but the fact is I have never got over it. Sure, it’s a running joke these days between Norm Provan and me, but it still hurts.You lose one grand final and it hurts. Lose two and it hurts worse. But to lose three in three years is bloody heart-breaking, especially when you are convinced an outside influence, and a few lousy dollars, was the deciding factor. That said, I don’t want to take anything away from Saints, and especially Norm. He was awesome that day, a power in everything he did. He plucked the ball from the mud with one of those big hands of his to send George Evans over for their first try. He was a tower of strength in an amazing team.

  When we returned that evening to the Wests club, having showered interminably to get the mud from every part of our bodies, the full misery of the afternoon started to sink in. It was obvious how all the players felt after losing the grand final, but when we got back to the Magpies club in Ashfield it was worse. The general depression seemed to have got to everybody. We had had an enormous year in which we had beaten Saints three times, but going back to that club was like standing outside the headmaster’s office, waiting for a caning. There were plenty of people there, but they were all morose. The worst thing of all was that they completely ignored the women. Whenever we went to Saints after games we were treated like royalty and our wives, especially, were looked after with great respect.

  At Wests that night, there was not even anywhere for us to sit as everyone gathered in the auditorium. The attitude for everybody was ‘if you can’t get a seat, get out’. Disappointment can be a savage thing, and I think everybody at Wests was just so disappointed they actually took it out on us. I’m sure they didn’t mean to, but that’s how it felt. Eventually Jack Gibson took it on himself to dig up some chairs from a storeroom or somewhere so that the girls could have a seat. A few hours earlier Jack had given us the most distressing news imaginable about the betting on the game, the referee and the likely outcome. Now, here he was making sure all the girls were looked after, when the club and the officials didn’t seem to care. It sort of book-ended an amazing day. I ran into Lawler years later at a conference when we were both club managers. We said
hello, but I couldn’t really bring myself to say much more than that. The hurt has never faded.

  I love the Gladiators photo and everything it has added to my life over the past 50 years, especially since it was made into the competition trophy. But it is a constant and somehow grim reminder of a great disappointment. A reminder of what might have been for a group of players who had busted their guts all year, and deserved better.

  •

  Norm Provan has a somewhat different view of the game, and 50 years of Western Suburbs complaints have not modified it one bit. For Provan, 1963 was his thirteenth year of first-grade football and his eighth winning grand final in eight years. He had no more doubts about St George pre-eminence in that one than he did in any of the others.

  NORM PROVAN

  I find it hard to separate some of those grand finals, but the Gladiators photo certainly has kept the 1963 win against Wests top of mind. I remember it most for the mud. Players of today would not believe those conditions. These days you never see a muddy field. The drainage is so good, the way the fields are cared for is so thorough. They would never allow a big game these days to be played on the sort of field on which we played that 1963 decider. The SCG was a bit dodgy at the best of times. They brought in that Bulli soil for the cricket pitch in the centre, and it made for hard wickets that set the ground up as one of the best cricket pitches in the world. But when it got churned up it was like glue. That day they played two lower-grade grand finals on it, and by the time we ran on it was an absolute quagmire. Inevitably it dictated the way the game would be played.

  Wests thought it would help them by restricting our backs. We already had backs of the calibre of Reg Gasnier, Eddie Lumsden and Johnny King, and that year we added a couple of 21-year-old recruits in Graeme Langlands and Billy Smith. Langlands finished up an Immortal, and I still rate Billy as one of the very best players I ever had the privilege to run on to a field with. Both of them were dynamite with the ball in their hands, so I can understand how Wests might have been happy that the mud might slow them down. But the fact was I loved playing in the mud. There was something exhilarating about it, no matter how uncomfortable it was. We had hard men up front like Kevin Ryan and Elton Rasmussen who loved to slog it out, and on a day like grand final day 1963, slogging it out was what you had to do. I know I had a strong game that day, and I loved it.

  In the years that we have been feted because of the photograph and the trophy, Arthur Summons and I have discussed many things about Rugby League in general, and our time in it especially. Arthur’s obsession about being robbed that day has been a running joke between us—just good-natured banter—over all that time. But deep down I know Arthur is still bitter about what he considers to be a bad deal, and knowing Arthur for the man he is, there is no doubt in my mind that he is utterly genuine in the doubts he has about the way the events of that grand final panned out. I have to say I was never aware of much controversy at the time, except for the uproar that did develop over the Johnny King try. They didn’t have the TV technology then to analyse as they might now, and certainly not straight away as they do these days. But there were a lot of film replays afterwards, and I thought all of them indicated the try was fair. I think even Arthur concedes that, after watching the replay. His beef is that the referee said, ‘Play it,’ but it was always a good plan, I thought, to play to the whistle.

  As for the other things that Arthur is on about—the penalties and the Dimond no-try and the scrums—I don’t have any recollection of anything being untoward. If Arthur’s judgement of those things is as good as his judgement of the King try, I’d say—in a nice way of course—that he is having himself on. I just don’t think Darcy Lawler would have been that silly. He was a strong, in-your-face sort of referee that none of us dared argue with, and there were plenty of rumours about him. But I have never considered there to be any question about our win that day. It has become a good story for Arthur. We always considered that Darcy Lawler did St George no favours at all, and as far as the 1963 decider goes I think it is significant that all the complaints through the years have come from within the Wests camp. I do not recall too many neutral voices being so definite about Lawler’s performance. Jack Gibson was a great friend of mine and of course Arthur Summons is too. I have great respect for them and I have no doubt they are genuine in what has been said. But there’s a lot of emotion in all of this still. As far as I am concerned, there was no more qualification to our win in that grand final than there was in any of the others.

  •

  Summons is by no means a lone voice in the howls of protest that have followed Saints’ win in the 1963 grand final. It remains a subject of choice at most Wests reunions, and other voices have been even more strident than Summons’. Hooker Noel Kelly, a particular target of Darcy Lawler on that day, was a tough nut renowned as a competitor who never took a backward step. He had many problems with referees and by and large he took the good with the bad. But he was furious that day. In his autobiography, Hard Man: A life in football, written in collaboration with Ian Heads, Kelly made no bones about his disgust with the events of the 1963 grand final. A few of his thoughts:

  I had, and have, the most serious concerns about the fair-dinkumness of Darcy Lawler as a referee. The events surrounding the grand final of 1963—Western Suburbs v St George—left no doubt in my mind that he was a referee who at times was influenced by outside factors in the way he controlled matches, and who at times bent the rules to fit in with his own wishes in a particular game . . .

  What I know is this—that we got a raw deal in that grand final at betting man Lawler’s hands . . . because he had done a deal—for 600 pounds—to look after St George . . .

  The League’s acceptance of Lawler and his ways was disgraceful. Everyone talked about Darcy privately, but nothing was ever done. The blokes at Phillip Street must surely have had their doubts . . . they must have known there was disquiet about the way one of their men refereed matches now and then.Yet they continued to sit on their hands . . . whenever he had one of his questionable games, people would just shake their heads and say ‘Darce has done it again!’ It was an accepted part of the game that he could do what he liked.

  Genuine mistakes are part and parcel of a referee’s lot, and mostly they are accepted. Such was the case in the 1962 grand final, when a howler by referee Jack Bradley costs Wests dearly. Peter Dimond had latched on to a ball that Saints winger Eddie Lumsden dropped, toed it over the line and steadied himself to dive on it for a try. John Riley tackled him from behind as he lunged for the ball. Referee Bradley, some 15 metres back, declined to give either a penalty try, perhaps the proper outcome, or a penalty. He simply ruled that the ball had been lost. Saints won 9–6. It was desperately unlucky for Wests and crucial to the outcome, but there was no particular uproar. Bradley had made an error, simple as that. Nobody questioned his motives. There was no doubt about his integrity.

  The allegations that rose against Lawler over the 1963 grand final mirrored a similar controversy that surrounded referee George Bishop, when Wests beat South Sydney in the 1952 grand final. Lawler took over from Bishop as the long-term No. 1 referee. Souths believed they were worked over by Bishop in the 1952 decider, and Souths captain Jack Rayner refused after that match ever to speak with Bishop again. In more genteel times of gentlemanly interaction, that was considered a monumental sanction. Bishop retired after that game. Lawler did likewise after the controversy of 1963. In many ways the Gladiators photo, with its powerful imagery of sportsmanship and mutual respect, was an ironic counterpoint to a dark day.

  6

  DIFFERENT ERA, DIFFERENT WORLD

  THE 1960S ARE REMEMBERED as a time of enormous social change. The baby boomers were moving into adulthood, The Beatles were shocking the world, and the rollicking evils of sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll were hammering away at the conservative mores of post-war Australia. But in truth, dramatic as it was, the change came slowly. In 1960 Australia’s population was hoveri
ng a little above 10 million—although the Australian Bureau of Statistics carried a qualification that full-blood Aborigines were not included. That came later. Trams were still rattling around Sydney streets, you could buy a decent Sydney house for the equivalent of about $15 000, and petrol was around 15 cents a litre.

  In sport too, it was a very different time. Christmas Day was a big deal when the Davis Cup tennis was on in Australia, because they always did the draw for the Challenge Round after Christmas lunch. It started on Boxing Day, and it was always Australia versus the United States. Neale Fraser defeated Rod Laver in an all-Australian Wimbledon final in 1960, Herb Elliott won the 1500 metres at the Rome Olympics by more than 20 metres, and those dastardly Americans tried to take away John Devitt’s 100-metres swimming gold medal because the judges were split on the decision. There was none of today’s electronic whiz-bangery in those days. Everything depended on judges with sharp eyes and timekeepers with stop watches and sharp reflexes, and often not everybody agreed. Devitt kept his medal.

  In Rugby League, the game was a much more basic pastime than the modern extravaganza of big money, high exposure, international television and galloping celebrity. The pioneer administrator H. Jersey Flegg was still president of the NSW League when the ’60s began, and by today’s standards the big issues were remarkably quaint. One of them was whether live television, introduced to Australia in 1956, should be allowed to cover Rugby League. One argument was that it would keep the crowds away if people could just watch the games at home, and for a time it was fiercely resisted. At the SCG, a suggestion that advertising should be allowed on the picturesque picket fence that surrounded the ground was initially howled down and took a long time to get approval. Believe it or not, there was also a debate about whether to allow Sunday play, which might interfere with church and the traditional family lunch, the Sunday roast. Sunday was family day, and Sunday football was a long time coming.