ARTHUR SUMMONS
It is an impossible task, but interesting nonetheless, to try to name the greatest players of your experience. As a barometer for the greatness I have seen, I tried to pick my top side of the last 50 years or so, but I quickly found I was stuck in the days of my youth, when I was at my most impressionable and heroes were everywhere. It also made the point, I think, that emotion is a huge part of a team game like Rugby League. The people I toiled with and bled with will always stand above those who came later, when the armchair was my solace and the passion was more subdued. In picking a fullback, for instance, I tried hard to coolly analyse the talents of Darren Lockyer or Billy Slater, but the debate in my mind somehow always came back to Ken Thornett or Graeme Langlands. I tried hard to see where Andrew Johns would fit, but no matter how hard I tried, Barry Muir kept niggling back at me, or even Des Connor, who was my Wallaby halfback in Rugby and who I don’t think has ever played a game of league in his life.
So in the end you concede that you are a creature of your time, and the respect that you have built for your contemporaries is almost impregnable, despite the relentless cavalcade of champions that has followed. It is also a fact that for a fellow of my vintage, we are talking about very different games. A wonderful player like Cameron Smith, for instance, would shake his head at the trials a hooker like Noel Kelly or Ian Walsh had to go through, flailing feet and butting heads in a no-holds-barred fight for scrum possession. Likewise Barry Muir at halfback would never have had the skill to kick for a leaping winger, as Andrew Johns or Cooper Cronk could do so sweetly in the era of limited tackles. Nor would Ken Irvine, perhaps the best winger I have seen, be able to leap for the ball over the line as wingers leap now. He was a road-runner, small but blindingly fast, and he fitted his time. So indulge me.Allow me to reflect on the greatness of my time in the game in my own way, recalling an age when Rugby League was different and the requirements of its players less complicated.
Even now, as I watch Slater or Ben Barba weave their magic, I still see Ken Thornett thundering down the field like a runaway train. He had everything . . . the strength of a second-rower, the speed of a winger. Nobody ever got past him, and he swallowed the high ball every time. Peter Dimond and Ken Irvine and Reg Gasnier still have pride of place, and later arrivals like Mick Cronin at centre and Wally Lewis at five-eighth also make my list of the greatest. Lewis is perhaps the best footballer I ever saw. Or was it Langlands? People often ask me how players would go in other eras. Andrew Johns is a case in point. He was a masterful player in his time, but I don’t think he would have been quick enough for the game we played. But we’ll never know.
I try to be more expansive in picking greatness among forwards over the years, but still I come back to my era. Nobody has ever been better than Johnny Raper. Dick Thornett and Brian Hambly, Noel Kelly and Ian Walsh of my time were all mighty players, as was Norm Provan. Now I know there is no logic to this, since great players just keep coming. But greatness is in the eye of the beholder, and as I sit back on a warm afternoon, glass of red wine in hand, my mind’s eye goes to those whose greatness I knew from personal experience. We’ll throw the immaculate front rower Arthur Beetson into that lot. And if I take in the breadth of my experience, there’s a word, too, for old Wallaby team-mates like winger Ken Donald, a fantastic player in any conditions, and the most durable forwards I have known in Nick Shehadie and Tony Miller, who both made British tours, ten years apart.
So there you have it. I remain eternally grateful for the privileges I have had, for the friendships that both Rugby codes have brought me, and for the greatness I have seen and mixed with along the way. John O’Gready’s photo and Winfield’s decision to turn it into a trophy have been a big part of that, as has the enduring friendship with Norm Provan that it inspired. I consider myself a very lucky man.
POSTSCRIPT
IN THE 50 YEARS since St George defeated Western Suburbs in the 1963 grand final, something like 9000 games of elite Rugby League have been played in and around the Sydney competition. Yet one moment endures as a classic symbol of the game and its ethos. John O’Gready’s photograph of the Gladiators and the classic trophy statuette that it spawned stand today, half a century on, as the most recognisable image of the Rugby League game and all it stands for. It serves also as a link between past and present, a bridge back to an age when the game was a Saturday-afternoon pastime, when players worked for a living at ordinary jobs, when training was a Tuesday and Thursday-night affair and a few beers at the pub afterwards was a routine for many. But it is also a reminder that the game at its heart never really changes. It is still a game for young men with fire in their belly, a team sport in which mateship and group responsibility remain the most important ingredients, and once the final whistle goes and battle is done, the fiercest rivals can still be mates.
Norm Provan and Arthur Summons have watched and marvelled over the years at the game’s transformation into the high-powered, highly professional operation that it is today. But they still see in the modern player a new-age version of themselves. A lot of things change around the edges, but the things that really matter—the contest, the ambition, the challenge and the camaraderie—remain much as they always were. In the years since the photograph was taken, the Gladiators image has achieved a life of its own. The decision to mould the trophy in its likeness gave it extra longevity. And the memorabilia it inspired are everywhere. Provan and Summons have signed countless prints, many of them gloriously mounted with story attached. Replica statuettes have found their way into the hands of collectors. A giant painting, faithful to the photograph yet introducing a hint of colour, was turned into 1000 prints. Provan and Summons each have one hanging on the wall at home, so the memory of the day so long ago is never far away.
John O’Gready was a knockabout bloke who took plenty of great photographs. But he was the first to admit that ‘The Gladiators’, like many great photos, was a bit of an accident. He could never have imagined the impact it would have. Nor could he have imagined the way in which it would shape the lives of the two captains whose moment of mutual respect became an image for the ages.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
THANKS ARE DUE to a number of people who helped make this book a reality. Ian Heads, a lifelong friend since we started work at the Daily Telegraph in the early ’60s, was instrumental in its conception and a great support in its gestation, and also provided some of the photographs. John Fordham, also a friend of more than 40 years, gave of his celebrated managerial skills to help get it off the ground. The written works of notable Rugby League historians, especially Gary Lester, David Middleton, Alan Whiticker, Larry Writer and the aforementioned Ian Heads, provided detail to support the recall of the authors. The folks at publishers Allen & Unwin, notably Rebecca Kaiser, Kathryn Knight and Elizabeth Keenan, have my gratitude for their professional attention and assistance.
Special thanks, of course, are due to two great champions, Norm Provan and Arthur Summons, with whom long conversations have been a fascination and a delight. Finally, I hope that this project provides worthy remembrance for the inimitable John O’Gready, whose consummate skill was its fundamental trigger.
The Gladiators Page 24