The Gladiators

by Norman Tasker

  The fact was, our behaviour was very civilised. In those days we saved our fighting for the field, never in bars, and we tried to avoid it there, too, if we could. I feel a bit sorry for the players of the current generation. I think they are held to a far higher public standard than we ever were, and it is hardly a surprise that they sometimes fall short of it. Life was different for us. With work and sport and family, our days were full. There was a routine to life that made the Saturday after-match gathering special, and there was a bond among the team and our wives that meant we spent much of that time together. Some of the wives—Esme Clay, June Rasmussen, Norma Wilson and Carole Raper among them—were real stalwarts of the group. They knew how footballers were and they knew how they needed to be supported. And they had personality, too.

  Elton Rasmussen ran a succession of pubs, and June was a very hands-on partner. On one occasion after football was finished for me we were having a drink with June in the Sydney pub they were running. Elton I think was still playing and wasn’t there, so June was in charge. One of the patrons was getting stroppy, and I could see June getting more and more annoyed. Eventually she decided some sort of action was necessary, so she took off a shoe and gave this guy a decent whack with it. I readied myself to respond to what seemed an inevitable need for back-up, but the fellow knew he had met his match and desisted. June handled it well enough on her own, which may have been a surprise to the errant customer, but was no real surprise to me. Even now, I see June and Norma and Esme occasionally. Sadly, Elton, Billy and ‘Poppa’ have moved on, but their girls remain a solid link to a wonderful past.

  18

  DAYS OF GREEN AND GOLD

  IN AN AGE WHEN Test match Rugby League really was the pinnacle of the game, Norm Provan and Arthur Summons excelled in Australian colours. Having first won selection against the touring Great Britain side in 1954, Provan was an automatic selection for the Kangaroo tour of 1956–57. Injury cost him a place in the Test matches in England, although by the end of the tour he had played all three Tests against France. He had played fourteen Tests by the time he finished against a touring French team in 1960, standing aside to devote more time to a growing business career. Arthur Summons was a comparative novice when he got the call to play against New Zealand in 1961, having switched from Rugby Union the previous season. By the following year he was Australian captain, and a year after that led the Kangaroos as captain–coach to the first-ever Ashes win in England. As captain, he never lost a Test.

  NORM PROVAN

  Three or four matches into the Kangaroo tour of 1956–57, I believed I had just about reached my peak as a Rugby League footballer. I was 25, very fit and very comfortable in the company of international players. I played ten of the first eleven games of the tour, and along the way I did some real damage to some formidable opponents. Then my tour went sour. A couple of games before the first Test, in a tour match against Oldham, I fell awkwardly in a tackle and felt the crack of trouble in my knee. I tried to hobble on, but it was clear there was some significant damage and eventually I had to leave the field. I was given a standing ovation. I could never work out whether it was because I had played well and they were a sporting lot, or because they were glad to see the end of me in a game in which the Kangaroos were taking a bit of a hiding. I was diagnosed with ligament damage, and in an age before much sophisticated treatment was available, we strapped it up and hoped for an early recovery.

  I was picked for the first Test a week or so later, but I had to pull out. Likewise for both the second and third Tests. Try as I might, I couldn’t get the knee good enough to stand up to a big game, and a tour that had looked so promising for me had ended up a disappointment. We won the second Test of that series but lost the first and third, and England took back the Ashes that we had won in Australia a couple of years earlier. Winning a series in England was tough going. You always knew things would be stacked against you, referee included, if the third game was a decider. I recovered sufficiently to play the three Tests against France on that tour, but the knee was by no means 100 per cent. I don’t think it ever was again. Although I had a long career after that, I could still feel the occasional twinge, even in later life as I ran the hills around my home at Mooloolah.

  One of the intriguing things about the early weeks of that tour was the workload many of us were required to endure. Ken Kearney was our captain–coach, and after four years in Killer’s team at St George I well knew how determined he was about winning. But he and the managers, his fellow selectors, didn’t seem at all prepared to take a risk on that tour, at least early on. We had a very good team of 26 players, but through those early weeks what might have been regarded as the Test side was required to play twice a week,Wednesday and Saturday. It meant an awful lot of good players sitting about twiddling their thumbs while the rest of us were getting worn out. One of those condemned to the sidelines for more time than was sensible was Ferris Ashton. He was an outstanding forward and a great contributor to the game whose talents deserved better. Nobody is happy on a long football tour unless he’s getting his fair share of football, and a lot of blokes weren’t. I don’t think that policy much helped our cause.

  It was a changing time for Australia. Clive Churchill was dropped after the first Test on that tour for the first time in his representative career. Churchill had revolutionised the game in his own way, providing an attacking link from fullback that had not really been employed previously. He ran brilliantly and often, and playing with him through the early ’50s was a great experience. Our hotel in the north of England for many long weeks of that tour was the Ilkley Moor Hotel, just outside the little town of Ilkley. It was a long way from the bright lights, and it has become somewhat legendary for the boredom it generated for many tourists. Personally I loved it. I loved running around the moors that surrounded it, and I enjoyed the quaintness of the place. It seemed to offer something of the heritage that abounded in England, and since I was never one for drinking and partying, I found it just fine.

  The French section of the tour presented no real challenge as far as the contest was concerned, although the manner of it was bizarre. In one of the Tests a French winger was twice bundled into touch but just kept running and was awarded a try. It wasn’t as if there was any argument about whether he had crossed the touchline, either. When our winger Des McGovern bumped him out the first time, he actually ran around the back of the Australian reserves sitting near the sideline. Only in France. The French had been a revelation in Australia in 1951 and were pretty good in 1955, too, but they had started to fall off the perch by 1956, and the weird attitudes they adopted to the rules and conventions of the game probably had a bit to do with it.

  We had a couple of cracks at the Poms through the next two seasons. The second World Cup was held in Australia in 1957, and the English thought they had a team that was streets better than the rest of us. Their manager announced them as the best Great Britain team ever. We towelled them up 31–6, and with comfortable wins against New Zealand, France and then a combined Rest of the World team, it was one of the best periods Australia had ever had in international football. A few innovations helped. Ken McCaffery had his first real go in that tournament, and he was brilliant. Ken was a fantastic mover on his feet, stepping this way and that, and when he moved from five-eighth to centre he just cut up the opposition. He was dynamite. He later moved from Queensland to play a lot of his football for North Sydney, but he never quite sealed the representative future that his form in that World Cup suggested.

  We had developed a very good Australian forward pack at that time, with blokes like Killer Kearney, Kel O’Shea and Queenslander Brian Davies providing up-front strength. Brian Clay was selected at lock but moved to five-eighth for the game against England, and he showed the same sort of command, especially in defence, that already was giving St George a lot of its premiership impetus. One of the major contributors to that side as well was Brian Carlson, who had been a shiner for us over the years at wing or ce
ntre. He moved to fullback after Keith Barnes was injured in the first game, and played brilliantly. Carlson was maybe the most natural Rugby League talent I ever saw. He almost glided over the field, was faster than he looked, always turned up in the right place at the right time, and he could kick monster goals. ‘Stayput’ Carlson also was perhaps the most casual of all the quality players with whom I played in those years. He hated training and was never as fit as he should have been. I often wondered whether that was all part of his success. His football was natural and spontaneous and free of all the clutter that regimentation brings. If he had trained hard, it might have taken the special edge from his game. He might have been just like the rest of us.

  When Great Britain returned the following year for another Ashes campaign, it was clear they didn’t much like getting thrashed in the World Cup. Their team was as hard as nails, bolstered by a young bloke named Dick Huddart who played in the second row and later was to join us as a prized signing at St George. This was my last hurrah against England, and like everybody else I approached the series with great confidence. Everything seemed on track when we won the first Test 25–8. But for the second Test in Brisbane, the Englishmen turned on a performance of rare courage. They led well early and won by a few points at the end, but to do so they had to beat the most horrendous odds. Their captain, Alan Prescott, broke his arm three minutes after kick-off. It was no greenstick, either. The bend in his forearm was pretty obvious, and you could see the pain on his face. For a tough front rower who played the game in close quarters, you would think a broken arm would be the end of it. Not for Prescott. He played the entire game, propping up the scrum with his outside arm useless, getting in the road wherever he could in defence, and doing whatever one arm would allow to get involved when the Poms had the ball. It was courage beyond the call, and his team responded to it with an amazingly committed performance.

  Fifteen minutes after Prescott was hurt, their five-eighth Dave Bolton smashed his collarbone. There was no question of his continuing, so England effectively were down to twelve and a half men for more than three-quarters of the game. Three or four others were struggling, too. If World War II had established English courage in the face of dire adversity, Prescott’s men certainly fitted the pattern. I don’t know what happened to our team. Sometimes when you see an opponent really suffering like that, you wait for things to happen, assuming the advantages you have eventually will turn the tide. I don’t know whether there was a little of that in our subconscious. But the tide never turned, and England won what would always be remembered as one of their great victories. We never recovered from that experience. They stitched us in the last Test 40–17.

  Courage aside, there was much to admire technically about that English team, and much to decry in some of the attitudes they adopted. Technically, they were very astute, as all English teams of the time were. Brian McTigue was one of their props, and he was the benchmark for the sort of football that Harry Bath brought to St George and Arthur Beetson developed in all his play years later. McTigue just lumbered about, but he was hard to tie down. And it was almost impossible to prevent him getting rid of the ball, usually with the most creative popped passes that saw runners hitting him at pace. He played Rugby League as if it was a game of draughts. Every move sought a result, and with men like Huddart ranging up beside him, there was profit everywhere. Then they had a genius like Alex Murphy at halfback, and a complete artist in Eric Ashton in the centres. They were a very good football side.

  Somewhat less admirably, they still had a hangover from 1954 in the way they attacked the game physically. They had Vince Karalius, for starters, and though he was a gentle and pleasant man off the field, on it he was wild, ruthless, and totally over the top. And he had mates. One of the early tests of the attitudes Great Britain would adopt was in the game against NSW. The equivalent fixture four years earlier had been so out of control referee Aub Oxford abandoned it and left, halfway through the second half. This time the drama was just as thick. Karalius would actually leap in the air to get a good crack at you, and predictably that brought some resentment. In the end referee Col Pearce sent off four men—Karalius, of course, then Rex Mossop and two NSW backs in Greg Hawick and Peter Dimond. I don’t know whether some of our team might have got their retaliation in first, but it was a lopsided group that had an early shower. Down to ten men, NSW found it tough to hold out over the late stages of the game, and an 8–0 lead turned into a 19–10 defeat.

  My Test career wound up with matches against New Zealand in 1959 and France in 1960. I decided I could not afford to go on the Kangaroo tour that Keith Barnes led in 1959–60. I was into my electrical goods business by then, and it needed some attention, and to make the tour would have been irresponsible given the broader aspects of my life and my family. It was one of the eternal dilemmas of Rugby League in those days, when Kangaroo tours went for several months and the money paid was hardly enough to cover the responsibilities of life. My Test second-row partner of so many years Kel O’Shea made a similar decision after the 1958 series against England. Even at home, he reasoned that the money he got for representing Australia did not cover the loss of a week’s work, so he declared himself unavailable for further Test duty. I knew that picking and choosing when you would represent your country was frowned upon, and that I was probably shutting myself out, although I did play against France the following season. But I had had a very good run. I had reached the stage when my family, a growing business and my role at St George were enough to keep me fully occupied.

  It was a thrill, however, to be still representing Australia when the new wave arrived in that 1959 series against New Zealand. Both Reg Gasnier and John Raper had made their way into the Saints team that year, and so outstanding was their performance that they were in the Australian team before they knew it. Gaz scored three tries in one of those Tests, and by the time he returned from the Kangaroo tour a few months later, he already was hailed as a superstar. It was great to be there when he made his debut, and to hear in the green and gold that familiar call—‘STI-I-I-I-I-ICKS’—as he raced to me in support, looking for the pass.

  19

  RIGHT PLACE, RIGHT TIME

  ARTHUR SUMMONS WAS STILL learning the ropes in his second season of Rugby League when he was called into the Australian team. Within twelve months he was captain. It was a rocket rise by any measure, and Summons made the most of it, winning all five Tests in which he led his country and, as captain–coach of the 1963–64 Kangaroos, bringing the Ashes home from England for the first time.

  ARTHUR SUMMONS

  In a little more than three years in the Australian team, I had my share of good luck. I was lucky to get picked when I did, given that the way was opened for me by the withdrawal through injury of men who were clearly higher in the pecking order. In my first game as captain, the coach threatened me with banishment from the team, and I was lucky to survive that. And in a year when I did not think my form really warranted it, I was chosen as captain–coach of the best team ever to leave Australia. No doubt about it, I had my share of luck.

  Having played just seven first-grade games in my first year at Wests, I was happy enough in the early weeks of the 1961 season to have gained what seemed to be a permanent place in first grade. Keith Holman was still there, but we shared the half and five-eighth roles and I was gathering confidence with every game. At least I could say I had justified the money they outlaid for me, not that it was all that much. But it seemed to me that I had come about as far as I could go, and thoughts of representative football never really entered my head. Out of the blue I got a chance in the City–Country game, which was played as a lead-up to an Australian tour of New Zealand. I went OK, but the cards really started to fall for me as the touring team was being picked.

  Harry ‘Dealer’Wells had built a formidable Test centre pairing with Reg Gasnier and was a certainty to tour. He had to rule himself out with an injury. Then the Country centre John Kelly from Griffith ruled himself
out as well. I thus got the nod as a utility back. To add to this avalanche of opportunity that suddenly came cascading my way, five-eighth Ray Beaven was injured on tour in an early game at Rotorua, which meant I was suddenly the No. 1 five-eighth on tour and heading for my Test debut. Beaven didn’t get back on the field at all on that trip, so I finished up playing eleven of the twelve tour games, mostly outside Barry Muir as my halfback. Muir was an irascible character, a sort of cult figure in Queensland while he was playing, and afterwards too. It was Muir who labelled the NSW State of Origin teams ‘cockroaches’. He was certainly entertaining, but I always got on well with him, and he was a terrific halfback to play outside.

  I had spent my entire Test career in Rugby Union playing outside another Queenslander, Des Connor, who had a long and accurate pass. Playing outside him at five-eighth gave me all the time and space in the world. Muir was much the same. He gave his five-eighth a bit of an armchair ride, and he added a combative attitude that may have brought us a lot of trouble, but it also brought us a lot of respect. When we played against each other, as we often did, we would go at each other like two mongrel dogs. He was an arrogant, tough little bugger who didn’t have too many inhibitions. The mind boggles as to how he might fare in the sanitised world of modern Rugby League. Sent off in the final Test on the 1963–64 Kangaroo tour, Muir didn’t take too kindly to the crowd jeering him as he made his way off the field, heading for the dressing room. He grabbed a water bucket from the sideline and let the water fly. He found his mark well, leaving a dozen or so of them drenched.

  Most of those New Zealand games were played in clawing mud. The two Tests were played at Carlaw Park in Auckland, which always seemed to be part swamp. Yet we were able to produce some nice football in the backs. We lost the first Test 12–10 on a field goal, and won the second 10–8. It was necessarily a bit of a slog in the mud, but getting the chance to play with the likes of Reg Gasnier and our tour captain Brian Carlson, who played mostly at fullback, was a great experience.