Gasnier in just a couple of years had established himself as one of the great players of the international game, and a try he scored in the second Test was a good example why. He made a break of about 60 metres and was hit, but not held, in a tackle. Any other player would have been face down in the mud. But Gasnier was the most beautifully balanced runner I ever saw, and he staggered on at some pace, trying to regain his equilibrium. When he eventually toppled, he kept going on his knees to get over the line. In a tight game it was a crucial try. I scored the only other one that day. Tackled close to the line, I got up quickly, toed the ball forward, as you were allowed to do then, and dropped on it for what turned out to be the game. It was enough to keep me in the frame for 1962, when things really started to happen for me.
As a point of context for Rugby League 1961-style, this was the year that the game took the bold step into the world of television. There was all sorts of concern about allowing the new medium into the game, since the fear was that people would stop coming to games in person. So they allowed the TV stations to telecast the second half only. And it was a long way from the billion-dollar bidding that goes on for exclusive rights these days. Channel 9 was given permission to cover the first game ever shown on Australian TV. A week later Channel 7 had a go . . . all very fair and even-handed, and very limited. In those serene days, when TV was mostly about Gunsmoke, 77 Sunset Strip and The Mickey Mouse Club, nobody could ever have dreamed of the impact television would ultimately have on sport generally, and Rugby League in particular.
The 1962 season brought a Great Britain team to Australia. Contests between Australia and the best of English football were magnificent affairs in those days, drawing big crowds and huge public interest. Eric Ashton’s 1962 touring side was one out of the box. They had fantastic forwards, built on the artistic organisational skills of prop Brian McTigue. He directed traffic, and outstanding runners like Brian Edgar, Dick Huddart and Derek Turner made hay. Alex Murphy was a master halfback, Eric Ashton was straight and strong in the centres, and the wingers Billy Boston and Mike Sullivan were great. Boston was impossible to tackle. I tried many times to get him low, only to be left sprawling. All you could do was jump on his back and hang on.
I was picked for all three Tests, the first at five-eighth to Barry Muir and the next two at halfback. We didn’t seem to get much selection consistency in those days. We had three different captains—Reg Gasnier for the first Test, Keith Barnes for the second, and me for the last Test—and three different halfback pairings. I had Queenslander Bob Banks at five-eighth in the second Test, and for the third Jim Lisle got the spot, although he was only a few months out of Rugby Union and had been elevated to the Test side with his Rugby League club experience still in single figures.
Even at Test level, the attitude to the game in those days was wild and woolly. Harry Bath had been appointed Australian coach with a brief to introduce some discipline and eradicate much of the wild behaviour that seemed to surround team camps. His first instruction to us when we gathered a few days before the Test at our Manly hotel was that we were to observe a 9 p.m. curfew. We would prepare seriously for what would be a very challenging Test series, he told us, and there would be no late-night sessions at the pub. A few beers after training was OK, but everybody had to be back by 9 p.m. The reaction to so unprecedented an edict was mild rebellion, with the captain leading the charge. Gasnier was a young man whose enjoyment of life matched his consummate skill, and he determined, in concert with most of the rest of us, that a little bonding down at the corner pub, The Steyne, surely would do no harm.
Once we had reported back for the 9 p.m. curfew, six or eight of us decided that challenging Harry was a worthwhile cause on its own. We were down the fire escapes and off into the night, and Bath was never the wiser. Such defiance was to become a more serious problem later in the series.
The lead-up to the Test matches had conformed to all the great traditions of an England tour. All four wingers—Ken Irvine, Michael Cleary, Mike Sullivan and Billy Boston—had been sent off in the NSW game. It was almost routine. The 1954 NSW game had been so wild it was abandoned halfway through the second half, and four players had been sent off in 1958 as well. So the passions were as high as they ever were. But the key thing about this English team was that they had levels of skill that allowed them to rely less on the biff as the basis of their game, as previous England sides had done. They scored seven tries to two in beating us 31–12 in the first Test, and they won the second 17–10. Our forwards found it hard to hold Huddart, Edgar and Turner especially, and as they kept breaking the line the English backs had a picnic. McTigue just stood and delivered, his legs spread wide, in an immovable pose that seemed to send the ball and a big English runner to wherever a hole might appear. Even out there chasing them, you could not help but admire the way they went about it. Many thought this was the greatest of all English sides to have come to Australia. I was certainly happy to agree with that assessment, since through those first two Tests it didn’t seem to matter what we did. They just kept coming.
For the final Test, I moved to halfback and was appointed captain. It was a fantastic honour for me. I had the advantage, I suppose, of schoolteacher training, and I was never a shrinking violet when it came to having an opinion and expressing it. If communication is a key skill of captaincy, I suppose I was lucky that I was a good communicator. Not that it seemed like doing me much good as we gathered again at Manly for our pre-Test camp. Harry Bath was still hammering at the discipline necessary to turn things around, and this time, with two Test defeats behind us, the group was a lot more inclined to go along with him than it had been prior to the first Test. On the Thursday night, it was arranged that a group would go to the pictures, which would keep them out of the pub and have them back nice and early for bed. There was, of course, a group that didn’t particularly want to sit through a movie, and it was agreed they could go and have a couple of beers provided they were back by the required time. As a dutiful captain, I said I would go with them and see that everything was OK.
All was fine at The Steyne until Tim Bristow turned up. I had played with Bristow in my Rugby days at Gordon, and three years on his reputation as a tough guy of the Sydney underworld had only been enhanced. Tim could be a very personable fellow, but he also fancied the reputation he had, and he was not averse to showing it off at any opportunity. He got into an altercation with one of the hotel workers who had joined us for a drink. Tim objected to something he said, so he gently removed his glasses and punched him on the nose, doing not insignificant damage. It took us some time to calm things down. There was no intention on the part of any of us to take on Harry’s curfew again, but as we dealt with the necessary diplomacy that Bristow’s incursion had required, time slipped away. We got back to the hotel an hour or two beyond the appointed time, to be confronted by Bath in the foyer, waiting like an angry parent. His mood was easy to read.
He told us he wanted to see the three of us—John Raper, Ken Irvine and myself–in the manager Arthur Folwell’s room at 8 a.m. ‘I’m going to recommend to Arthur that you be dropped from the team,’ he said. ‘I’m fed up with it. I’ve been appointed to bring some discipline into this side, and I’ve had enough.’ There was no question that Harry was serious. I told the others to let me do the talking when we fronted up to Folwell and Bath next morning. Harry had not mellowed at all. He wanted to make a point. He wanted us out. It was not shaping as an auspicious start to my career as Australian captain . . . booted out before I had even got on the field.
At the meeting, I conceded we had been in serious breach of Harry’s rules, and decided to try to do a deal with Folwell. ‘Dropping us is a bit extreme,’ I said. ‘What about letting us play, and if we don’t perform we never play for Australia again.’ That was interpreted as us needing to win to save our careers, and since we had taken two sizeable hidings from a great side, the portents were not good. Folwell seemed to think that was a reasonable idea. Given the weight
of the decision that Harry Bath was looking for—dropping the heart of the Australian team a day before a Test—I think there was general relief that a workable compromise had been struck. Harry went along with it. But it had one other outcome. It put the most horrendous pressure on me. I remember the trip to the ground next day, my heart pumping and my stomach churning, as the most stressed I had ever been before a game. I had put myself in a position where my career was on the line. I knew we needed something special to save it.
20
ENGLAND SWINGS
IN ANY CAREER of consequence, there are days that stand alone as makers or breakers of men. For Arthur Summons, the third Test of the 1962 series against England was such a day. It was his first game as Australian captain, and he took the field under threat. Summons had made a scheme of arrangement with the team management to defer banishment for having broken a team curfew a couple of nights before the game. It was a case of perform or else. Summons finished up man of the match. It was his third such award in three Tests of the series, making him Australia’s player of the year. He scored one try in that final game and had a large hand in another two. Australia won 18–17 against heavy odds. It was a day to remember.
ARTHUR SUMMONS
The subconscious is a powerful thing. Before that final Test my nervous energy was off the scale as I spoke to the team before the game. Our coach Harry Bath had spoken of tactics and strategies and ways to correct the errors of previous games. He had an amazing grasp of the intricacies of Rugby League, and he laid meticulous plans that gave maximum opportunity to every team he coached. I wanted to talk of other things. I didn’t really have a plan, I just talked. The words kept coming from somewhere deep in the recesses of my mind, and the more they came the more I rose to them. In the end I was all fire and brimstone. When you get in a situation like that, and some inner combustion of the subconscious mind and nervous energy is at work, the words are very real. You can’t colour them or twist them or manufacture them to some particular purpose. They just pour forth, and they fall where they may.
I think I was trying to do two things before the emotion took over. I was trying to make the point that we had improved through the previous two Tests, having scored some very good tries, and that we could win this one if only we believed we could win it. I was also trying to make the point that our futures depended on it. Just get out there and give it to them. Sometimes those things work and sometimes they don’t. Different players respond to different things, but we had taken so many beltings from this English team I think just about everybody was ready to respond to some sort of call to arms. Blokes like John Raper always did. It didn’t take much to get him climbing the wall. But even some of the more studious members of the team responded this time, and as we took the field you could sense that this was going to be no ordinary performance.
We had some disruption to our team, especially in the backs. Reg Gasnier couldn’t play, so the selectors pushed our big winger Peter Dimond into the centres. Frank Drake was the third fullback of the series after Don Parish and Keith Barnes, and the Rugby Union international of the previous year, Jim Lisle, had come into the side at five-eighth with just a handful of Rugby League games behind him.
As we had in previous matches, we jumped out to a lead only to be overhauled and looking down the barrel in the second half. They led 17–11 with about ten minutes to go, and what a dramatic ten minutes it was. We had scored three tries, but without a top-class goal kicker in the side we had managed only the one goal.Then Kenny Irvine got another one to put us within striking distance.We threw everything at the Poms in those final minutes. I remember feeling that we were very competitive, and by no means did all seem lost. When I got the ball and made a break to the left, looking for Irvine, I thought we were a chance. I let the pass go and remember nothing more. Billy Boston had charged in from the wing, blindsided me, and caught me with one of his stiff-arm specialties. I went off on a stretcher, unconscious. I started to come to as we neared the sideline and remember our hooker Ian Walsh, chasing me and yelling. Something about not having any heart, and being a sook, and ‘Get off that bloody stretcher and come and help us.’ I staggered back.
There must have been no more than two or three minutes left. Again I broke towards Irvine’s wing.This time I saw Boston coming. I dummied and ducked and managed to get the ball to our prop Bill Carson, who I played with at Wests. Billy was a lightweight as props go, but he had a lion’s heart and he simply never stopped. He ran to Irvine’s wing, and as the Poms came at him he gave Ken the ball. With a bit of space and the line close, nobody was going to catch Ken Irvine, who at that time was probably the fastest winger on the planet. The Englishmen were up in arms as Irvine scored, claiming Carson’s pass was forward. There was a fairly wide consensus that it indeed might have been. But referee Darcy Lawler didn’t think so, and even if he did he wasn’t going to deny Irvine his try. That left us one point behind, a minute or two to play, and a kick from the sideline to win it.
I threw the ball to Irvine, who was none too impressed. ‘There’s no one else, mate,’ I told him. ‘Just kick it.’ Irvine lined it up in that toe-poke style that was the way goal kickers worked before somebody invented the round-the-corner style. It is probably fair to say nobody at the ground gave him much chance of kicking it. He lined it up and readied himself for the kick when Darcy Lawler intervened. The exact words seem lost in legend, but it was something like, ‘Mate, you’re lined up too far left. Move it a bit to the right.’ Irvine studied the ball and walked back to it. He made the adjustment as Lawler had suggested, struck it well, and it soared over the bar to give us an 18–17 win. It was one of the sweetest moments I have ever experienced, and against a side like that it was a mighty triumph.
I have enjoyed few games as I enjoyed that one. I made an early break to give our fullback Frank Drake a try . . . the first time a fullback had ever scored in a Test match. And I scored a try myself early on, but that was largely a result of pure fear. I had learned well from Noel Kelly and others about the subtle arts of scrummaging, and I was feeding the scrums in a way that gave Ian Walsh every chance and made it almost impossible for their hooker Bill Sayer to get anywhere near it. Darcy Lawler didn’t care, but as the count against Sayer mounted, Sayer certainly did. He called me for everything he could lay his tongue to, and when I responded with something very original like ‘bloody Pommy whinger’, he went feral. Whenever I got near the ball from that point all Billy Sayer wanted to do was to exhort all his mates to ‘get that little bastard’. His mates seemed very keen to oblige.
There came a point where it seemed they had me. As we moved the ball from the ruck, their lock Derek Turner had me lined up. Sayer was screaming at him, ‘There he is, Derek, get the little bastard,’ or words to that effect, and I knew the tackle would be meant to maim me if at all possible. Turner was a fiery and hugely effective lock forward. England always seemed to have one, as Vince Karalius of early tours proved, and Malcolm Reilly later on. But for the moment my problem was Turner. I couldn’t think of much else to do but respond to the terror I felt by jagging off my right foot, ducking at the same time, and getting out of there as fast as I could. I slipped between Turner and Sayer, and Billy Boston came in to cover me as I looked for Irvine on the wing. Boston seemed to hesitate, and momentarily I was lost, unable to find Irvine’s wing. Suddenly Irvine was beside me. ‘Put it down, mate,’ he said, ‘you’re over the line’.
It was not a happy match for Derek Turner. Not long into the second half, our front rower Dud Beattie dislocated his shoulder and had no hope of staying on the field. He was devastated at having to leave and reducing our numbers, so we came up with a plan. ‘See if you can take one of them with you,’ I suggested. As soon as play resumed, Beattie let fly a flurry of punches at Derek Turner for no apparent reason. It wasn’t easy, either, with one arm out of its socket and held against his body, and the pain obvious. Turner was taken by complete surprise but reacted as per script in those days by re
turning a flurry of punches at Beattie. Darcy Lawler sent them both off.
As soon as they started for the dressing room, Beattie clearly in great pain and assisted by a first aid man, Turner realised what had happened. He was furious. He tried to get at Beattie again, but Beattie was in no mood to fight, and the ambulance man helping him from the field became his protector. There was no doubt it helped us. A little earlier the English winger Mick Sullivan had chased Irvine about 20 metres to whack him, so he was sent off as well. It left them two short, or one shorter than us, since Beattie had left. In no way did that diminish the great feeling of euphoria that swept over us in the dressing room afterwards. The last thing we had wanted was to be the first Australian team to lose all three Tests to Great Britain.
The celebrations were long and genuine, and both our coach Harry Bath and manager Arthur Folwell were thrilled that we had achieved what we had. Nothing was ever said again about the three miscreants who had broken curfew at Manly and been threatened with dismissal from the team.We had lived up to our side of the bargain and produced a Test match performance of which everybody could be proud. Nobody was getting kicked out after that.We had turned a corner, and better deeds were yet to come.
21
THE COACHING DILEMMA
AS MELBOURNE’S PREMIERSHIP COACH Craig Bellamy wrestled with a decision on his coaching future in the early weeks of 2013, some of his players canvassed a back-to-the-future scenario for their club. Bellamy had received a monster offer to move to St George, and such a decision was always going to take time. Faced with the need for a ‘just in case’ contingency plan, some in the Melbourne club reignited a debate that had raged in another time. They talked again of the value of a captain–coach.
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