In 1990, having sold the caravan park and the land at Kuranda, we moved to the Sunshine Coast and started to develop the Oasis Resort at Caloundra. This was a fabulous property in a wonderful part of the world. We had 48 rooms in the first stage, and by the time we had built that up to 110 rooms, with a function centre, events facilities and the rest, it was a very big part of the Caloundra tourist scene. In the late 1990s, when Rod Macqueen had taken over the Wallabies, he set up a home away from home with the team and their families, and they stayed with us for long periods. They trained nearby and looked after themselves, trying to make family life as normal as possible, and it was a great thing to see the wives and the kids enjoying a footy environment along with the players. John Eales was the captain, and people like Matt Burke, George Gregan and Stephen Larkham were all in the team. I liked to think our resort played its part in making that team the side that it was. It won the Bledisloe Cup handily against New Zealand, won the 1999 World Cup, and was top of the world Rugby tree for quite a few years.
We sold the Oasis in 2012, kept three of the units, and moved up to the hills above the Sunshine Coast, where we built a house at Mooloolah. We have done quite a bit of property development over the years. We built apartment blocks at Caloundra and Maroochydore, and we had a restaurant–café at Maroochydore as well. We had a pub at Hervey Bay for a while, and a land subdivision at Tanawha, and it has all kept us very busy for a very long time. It is fair to say we had a go. There has been a lot of risk involved, a fair whack of debt, and no shortage of pressure, and we have had our setbacks. But there has been a great sense of achievement that has gone with it all as well. I am very lucky that Lindy has been such a great support. She has been the brains of the operation, and has worked hard on all the detail that development of this sort requires.
My three sons—Noel, Doug and Nathan—are all near us in Queensland now. Noel and Doug played a bit of football in Sydney, and Noel got as far as Cronulla seconds, but my career undoubtedly weighed on them. It is never easy for the sons of the father. My daughter Suzie is still in Sydney, and we have six grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren, all of whom are a great blessing to us. I look back on football these days as a very important part of my life but not the only part. I am remembered as a footballer, and the Gladiators trophy and all that has gone with that has kept the memory alive. But I have always tried to keep all that in perspective. I have had a good working life, a good family life and a good sporting life, and I am lucky that they have blended so well together.
ARTHUR SUMMONS
Football has given me a lot of recognition through life, and loads of friends, and I am grateful for the many privileges that it has brought me. But the fact is my work has always steered my life. I left Sydney within a few months of leading the Kangaroos to Britain to take on a job that looked like it might last. As I completed my football life in Wagga Wagga, it was my employment as general manager of the leagues club that occupied most of my time, and we still live in the town. When I was first selected for Australia I turned up late to camp at Manly before a Test against England because I didn’t want to leave work early. I was a schoolteacher, and just leaving was not something you could responsibly do. The coach, Harry Bath, was not happy. But my work ethic told me then, as it has always told me since, that having a job carries certain commitments.
I probably overdid it in my time at Wagga Leagues, working longer hours than is conducive to a balanced life. But I didn’t feel I could half do it as the club continually expanded and became the social centre of the town. It was a big responsibility for a 27-year-old ex-teacher, moving from a kids’ classroom to an adult playground. But I took it very seriously. It has always been that way. We looked for other opportunities to do things as a family, and when we found something we could work at, we made sure we worked at it hard. We got into the hotel game in Wagga, and my wife Pam and our son David and daughter Janine, took on hefty responsibilities in running the pubs while I was still involved at the leagues club. We bought the freehold on the Imperial hotel in town and renovated it. It was a haven for sportsmen and families. It was incident free and had a friendly and inviting atmosphere that made it successful. Pam took the licence on that because I was still at the club and David was a week or so too young, but we could only let her run it in the daytime. At night, when the wives rang up wondering where their husbands were, our practice was to be very vague lest we got them into trouble. Pam would simply announce, ‘He told me not to tell you, but, yes, he’s here,’ or put the miscreant on the phone, or give him a bit of a tongue-lashing and send him home. She was emptying the place out and costing us a fortune, but she won a lot of respect from the womenfolk around town.
David did a wonderful job running the Imperial and improving its value. When it got too much for Pam and the kids, we leased it out and took on a new lease at the Kooringal pub with a partner, Geoff Perryman, who took on the licence. Finally we bought the Tolland in the ‘suburbs’ of Wagga in partnership with Dave Emanuel, an old mate of mine who had played in the second row on our Wallaby tour back in 1957. It was a good business, a nice hotel in a good part of town, and again it became a popular spot for families and their celebrations. My daughter Janine ran it for us as licensee, and it was very much a family affair in which we all helped. It was an exciting time. At one stage we sponsored the Wagga Gold Cup, which was a real carnival in Wagga. We eventually sold the Tolland to a hotel group that leased it to Woolworths, and it is part of the huge Woolworths pub operation today.
Through all of this, family was very important to Pam and me. We have five very good kids—David, Gillian, Catherine, Janine and Kellie—and all of them had an inclination to sport. David was a very good swimmer early on but had to stop when he started to get bad ear infections. I can still remember the excitement when he broke 60 seconds in the 100 metres for the first time as a kid. The girls were into hockey, softball, netball, volleyball and touch football. Kellie was also a very good gymnast. She could wind her body into knots that used to make me wince. Janine reached national standard in both hockey and softball, and was on the cusp of the Olympics at one stage. But being good at both didn’t help her in an age of growing specialisation.
Our second child, Gillian, was a great soulmate for Pam and a fantastic girl. Pam and I were out to dinner one night in 1994 when Gillian rang to tell us she had been diagnosed with breast cancer and was booked in to have her breast removed. I can hardly begin to describe the shock of that phone call and the heartbreak that followed. Gillian had the operation and began a chemotherapy program, and for a time she looked so well. Her attitude was always positive. Six weeks after her last chemo treatment, she fell pregnant with twins. But it soon became clear that Gillian’s cancer had spread to her bones and the chemotherapy was not going to effect the cure we all were hoping for. Gillian made the decision that she would carry the twins until somebody told her it was critically unwise to do so for the babies’ sake. At the same time, she had to think about their care. When Pam asked Gillian how she would like them raised, she said simply: ‘You’ll know what’s best, Mum.’
Jagan and Jali—a boy and a girl—were born without problem, two beautiful babies who today, as teenagers, remain beautiful people. Gillian was unmarried, and the babies’ father agreed to grant us custody. Our daughter Catherine agreed to raise them. Our son David lives nearby in Sydney so he lends a hand, and the kids have had as much loving attention as any kids could want. Gillian died at noon on December 22, 1996, eight months after the twins were born. She was 35. It was our 40th wedding anniversary, and every anniversary since Gillian died has been tinged with sadness. But we still marvel at her courage, and the joy that she had brought us, even in the darkest days. Catherine and David have done a wonderful job with the kids. Their Dad comes to see them every so often, and Pam and I delight in going to Sydney for their school events and their sport, or just to see them. The kids love their sport. Jagan is quite a talented basketballer and golfer, with hand–ey
e coordination that is the mark of all good sportsmen. Jali has the same natural gifts, and is keen on soccer and volleyball. It is true that great joy can grow out of the darkest sadness.
These days we live quietly, still in Wagga and still thankful that the Magpies stalwarts Jack Murphy and Arthur Dixon gave us the opportunity to come here back in the ’60s. Family is the centre of our lives now, but the footy is never far away. All the old Riverina blokes get together every so often, and the spirit of those days lives on.With that, and the Kangaroo reunions we have every year, and getting together with those of us who are left from the 1957 Wallabies, I am constantly reminded how rich my life has been. Norm Provan and I delight in how Rugby League has embraced us because of the photo and the trophy, and how that has extended our involvement in the game. But your sporting years stay with you anyway, bound up in the people you have met along the way.
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AFTERNOON CONVERSATIONS
ONE OF SPORT’S ENDURING delights is that it inspires conversation and discussion that lasts a lifetime. Games played in the bloom of life are replayed in the twilight, and there is an eternal pleasure in the conversation of quiet afternoons. The Gladiators of 1963 are fortunate to have been given, through John O’Gready’s photo and the premiership trophy that followed, a continuing chance to converse, over half a century, with people of all generations about great days, past and present. The topics are endless.
On recognition
ARTHUR SUMMONS
It’s a fine state of affairs when your most recognised feature is your nose, but that’s the way it is. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve broken it, but it is probably in the high teens. First time was as a small kid at school. I can still remember sitting on the football field crying. The biggest job done on it was a stiff-arm from Easts’ Gordon Clifford in my first season with Wests. It is now not much more than limp cartilage, and it’s the reason I look the way I do.
I got very good at self-correction. I would feel it go, or somebody would point out that my nose was facing the wrong direction, and I would grab hold of it and with a sudden yank pull it back to where it needed to be. I did that many times, and it proved a handy skill later in life. At home in Wagga Wagga, when my daughter Catherine was not much more than a toddler, she swam into the wall of the local swimming pool face first. The blood gushed, and when we got her out of the pool her nose was at an angle that was well known to me but horrified her mother. I grabbed it in the old familiar way and yanked. My wife Pam freaked. ‘Don’t do that,’ she shrieked. ‘I don’t want her with a nose that looks like yours.’
It was, of course, straight by then, and even when Pam insisted we take her to the doctor, my on-the-run surgery got a very serious nod of approval. ‘I would say Arthur knows a lot more about broken noses than I do,’ the doctor told Pam. ‘It is in perfect position.’ It’s an ill wind that blows no good!
NORM PROVAN
I don’t know whether it is good or bad, but being the size I am I do get recognised a fair bit. It has its pressures, and it’s hard on my wife Lindy sometimes, but there’s still something nice about it. I enjoy talking football, often with young people who are a couple of generations behind me. But I have found that being recognised is one thing, and taking it for granted is another. I remember being pulled over by a traffic cop in northern Queensland one day when I was helping out with some coaching at a local club. I was in a hurry, and the policeman was certainly within his rights to stop me. We had a lovely conversation. He asked me about ‘The Gladiators’ and I confirmed that indeed it was me in the photo, and he gushed on about what an honour it was to meet me and how much he loved the football and so on. But my expectation of any favours was poorly placed. As he handed me the fine, he seemed quite sincere in telling me what a great pleasure it had been to have a chat.
On Super League
NORM PROVAN
One of the more difficult assignments of my life in football was to sit perfectly still for artist Reg Campbell as he painted a portrait of me that now hangs in the foyer of the St George Leagues club. It was entered in the Archibald Prize and was one of those selected for display. It is an excellent painting, and the fact the St George club wanted to do it remains one of the great honours of my life. It was tough going, mind you. We did it in two-hour sittings, and the hardest part was getting the exact same pose every time I resumed my seat. Reg was a perfectionist. We were going to do it in a studio at Penrith, but the light wasn’t right, so we finished up in the dining room at St George Leagues.
During the Super League war of the middle 1990s, the painting mysteriously disappeared from the wall above the staircase at the leagues club. They said later it had been sent out for cleaning, but I’m not so sure about that. The Super League ruckus had led the Saints Board to seek an amalgamation with Eastern Suburbs. There was a lot of pressure at the time for consolidation of the Sydney clubs, and Saints were trying to ensure their survival. But such a plan obviously had plenty of emotional opponents, and I was one of them. I spoke at a public meeting at Arncliffe School of Arts and gave the Board both barrels for even suggesting that a club with Saints’ history should partner up with Easts. The Board members were furious with me, but the amalgamation was put on hold and in the end did not go ahead. That’s when the painting disappeared. I was convinced they had declared me persona non grata and wiped me from the memory bank.
Some time later I got a letter from the Board asking me if I would support an amalgamation with the Illawarra Steelers. They pointed out that they really needed to do this if the club was to emerge intact from the Super League war. I told them that if such a union was imperative, this was a much better fit. We had gained so many players from the Illawarra, and even the colours were the same. The ‘cleaning’ job was completed and the painting was restored to its spot in the club. It was a hard time for everybody, and the aftermath of the Super League raid I think left permanent damage. Inflation in player payments and the game generally put money on a new pedestal, which changed lot of things. Trust, even between friends, was broken. And great clubs forced to amalgamate inevitably lost some of their identity. It was a shame.
On pride and prejudice
ARTHUR SUMMONS
Switching from Rugby Union to Rugby League made me a marked man on both sides of the fence. In my first year in league we played Manly in one game and I ran into the legendary Rex Mossop, also a former Rugby international. I remember making a break and turning the ball inside as Mossop came at me. He just kept coming, knocked me down, and gave me the facial massage that was commonplace at the time.
‘You’re not playing that sissy game now, son,’ he said. ‘This is a man’s game.’ I looked up at him and said, ‘I can’t see too many men around here.’ That got me a whack in the mouth and a split lip. But the angst came from both sides. Some years after I switched, I was at a Wallaby reunion at the Rugby Club in Sydney, all dressed up in a dinner suit. I bent at the bar to pick something up and the old Wallaby warhorse Tony Miller nudged me with his knee into the trough. As I tried to get up he nudged again, and down I went again. It was a great joke. Cyril Towers and Wylie Breckenridge, two legends of the 1927 Waratahs, were at the function and they looked at me with withering contempt. Clearly they thought Rugby League had turned me into some sort of delinquent.
On greatness
NORM PROVAN
Sport has always been at the centre of my life. I have admired Jack Nicklaus and Cathy Freeman and Kosta Tzyu as much as I admired the champions of my Rugby League life. My home is adorned with team photos that rekindle memories of a wonderful time. Among them are photo compilations of the groups selected to celebrate the first 100 years of Rugby League in Australia. These are the Top 100 Players of the Century, and the Team of the Century. For me, looking through them brings back recollections of great people and great days. I have always found greatness a hard thing to measure. Dally Messenger, for instance, makes it into the group that represents the Team of the Century, but I w
onder how much of that is just the romance built into the legend over so many years. Messenger must have been a fine player, as reflected in his label ‘The Master’. But how much of his reputation revolves around the fact that his switch from Rugby Union gave league the impetus it needed to kick off in the first place? Would he really measure up with Gasnier or Fulton, or with Mick Cronin or Harry Wells or Darren Lockyer or all the greats that have followed? Of course, we’ll never know. And as the years roll by, I suppose you can say that about almost anybody who finds himself in such exalted company.
Still, since my time in Rugby League stretches back to the late 1940s, I reckon I have had enough personal experience to know greatness when I see it, and I have seen plenty. I played with and against Clive Churchill when he was league’s greatest player, starting the trend that turned the fullback into one of the game’s most potent attacking agents. I remember the natural genius of Brian Carlson, who could play almost anywhere in the backs with equal skill. I have been on the field with classic Englishmen like Brian McTigue and Eric Ashton, and I have joined battle with firebrands like Vince Karalius. I have watched in awe so many champions who have followed. Men like Wally Lewis and Bob Fulton, Arthur Beetson and Ron Coote, Darren Lockyer and Andrew Johns, Greg Inglis and Billy Slater would stand in any era.
But when all is said and done, I know how fortunate I was to have played in the teams I did. Even now, I don’t believe anybody has ever surpassed the supreme standard of Reg Gasnier, Graeme Langlands and John Raper. I have watched the halfback geniuses over time, and I still can’t say that I would put the likes of Peter Sterling or Steve Mortimer or Andrew Johns or Cooper Cronk ahead of Billy Smith. Billy played up a bit, but on the football field he was the ultimate professional, the ultimate competitor, and a man blessed with rich skill. I can say with conviction I have never seen a better forward than Harry Bath, nor a more skilled leader than Ken Kearney. It is true that I played my football in a different age, when we lived by different standards, and in no way do I minimise the skill of today’s players. But I consider myself lucky to have played in the era I did. It was a simpler, more relaxed way of life and football was part of that, but it was an era that produced some amazing players, and it offered a camaraderie that lasts a lifetime. Looking back and remembering the people who made it like that remains one of life’s great joys.
The Gladiators Page 23