by H. G. Nelson
Sideline battles between the mascots were often as entertaining as the on-field struggle for state domination.
A curious feature emerged early in this two-state war. The NSW Blues selectors often listed a much better side on paper than their opponents, but Queensland could never be discounted. Since the start, the NSW team has had a genius for underestimating the Queensland side. The Maroons regularly pull off an upset result when the odds and injuries were stacked against them. These life-affirming wins were based on the famous Maroon heart and desperation. The team often surprised, playing with huge heartfelt pride. This was particularly true of matches played at the cemetery of Lang Park, now Suncorp Stadium.
Origin matches are simply the best game of rugby league because the best players are playing. The original match in 1980 had its doubters. Pundits said it would not be taken seriously. But in the first Origin, when Mick Cronin, playing in blue, was thumped by Parramatta teammate and, for the night, Maroon skipper, Arthur Beetson, there were grins all round in the stands. The committee realised the concept would work. Being Maroon was suddenly the most important thing in the rugby league world if you were not Blue. Maroonism is a state of mind, something the heart can only feel. But it is something Queensland builds a team on.
Maroonism is a state of mind, something the heart can only feel. But it is something Queensland builds a team on.
That elusive ingredient of spirit often swerves around the Blues. The NSW supporters wear bright blue plastic wigs to show their support. But a Blues wig is no match for the beating heart of Queensland.
It is an odd sport that requires players to pack down on the weekend with teammates who will be their mortal enemies at Origin level mid-week. On Wednesday night, players who hate each other’s guts at the weekend club level have to put those animosities aside to play together for their state. This takes some skill physically, intellectually and emotionally. But only the best and most adaptable are tapped for the higher calling. Becoming a Maroon or a Blue is the pinnacle of world league and the highlight of any player’s career.
Origin is a wild risk-taking ride. It is a potent mix as it is a mate v mate, state v state, hate v hate and date v date occasion. Excitable players clash head-on, geed up by the partisan supporters in the biggest rugby league crowds on the planet. Both sides share an irrational hatred of the opposition and where they come from three nights a year. Understandably, the Origin cauldron is the place where league legends emerge.
Origin time illuminates an old truth that many rugby league players freely admit to: ‘If we did not have rugby league in our lives, we would be in jail.’ The code provides an outlet for young adults who don’t fit in or have an anti-authority chip on their shoulder or just want to be idiots. With so many jail inmates familiar with the rules of rugby league, jails are now running courses in rugby league refereeing. Many exinmates now control matches across Australia every weekend. They are doing an excellent job with the whistle. When it comes to penalties, no one knows rugby league crime like a rugby league player who has spent several years on the inside thinking about where they went wrong. Remember, the possibilities of mayhem during eighty minutes of controlled violence are virtually limitless.
When it comes to penalties, no one knows rugby league crime like a rugby league player who has spent several years on the inside thinking about where they went wrong.
The rules of the game are always being pushed to the outer edges of common sense by bright sparks in the wrestling departments of all clubs. The new COVID league rules are going through a period of weekly changes in emphasis and application. Changes that were unimagined by the creators of the code. Referees have to take on board new emphasis and nuance of interpretation from head office. The nuance is sent round by email on Thursday morning, before the top-of-the-table clash between two teams who could be there in the big dance. It is a game of many moving parts.
The trouble for officials has always been that as soon as one particular life-threatening tackle is outlawed another creative invention is unleashed from the club’s wrestling coach’s playbook. This new outrageous stretching of the rules has one purpose. That is adding significant damage to the young Wagga High School product Ezra ‘Ace’ Hensby who is turning out in his third game for the Dragons. Ace has been described by the Nine Wide World of Sport commentary team as ‘a try-scoring machine’ and a certainty for the Kangaroos. The opposition wrestling coach hopes the kid will be on the sideline after the second scrum.
Tackling technique has evolved with every passing minute since 1908. A great deal of pain has been inflicted by the tick tock, the crusher, the squirrel grip, the hip drop, the shoulder charge, the head high, the bounce and the sleeper hold in which players were literally put to sleep in a tackle.
A great deal of pain has been inflicted by the tick tock, the crusher, the squirrel grip, the hip drop, the shoulder charge, the head high, the bounce and the sleeper hold in which players were literally put to sleep in a tackle.
The sleeper hold featured in the repertoire of the great American wrestler Mark Lewin. Mark wrestled in Australia during a golden age of local mat men. He pulled on the trunks, climbed between the ropes and grappled using the noms de undies The Purple Haze and Skippy Jackson in the late 1960s. His signature grip, the startling sleeper hold, put many an opponent out for the count. It was featured weekly in Channel Nine’s World Championship Wrestling (1964–78). This black-and-white must-see TV experience was a highlight of the channel’s Wide World of Sport. It was hosted by the voice of the atomic drop, Jack Little.
The ‘sleeper’ has been banned by rugby league for wasting too much time. An opponent was often out for twenty minutes at a time. The great Western Suburbs league legend Tommy Raudonikis missed a whole second half of a semi-final when an opposing prop put him under in the crucial minutes leading up to half-time. Play was held up as the trainers and doctors dragged Tommy into the sheds. By the time the limp, prone package was brought around by the club medicos with a sprinkle of Fuji dust, the game was over.
As the offending prop, Randy ‘Besser Block’ Bruce, said when a guest speaker at the opening of Lithgow’s Watsford Oval, International Centre of Rugby League Excellence in May 2017:
Everyone asks about the semi-final hit on Tommy. I tried a hat full of tricks on the little bugger during the first half, the grope, the squirrel, the atomic drop and the head-high coat hanger. I gave him a nip in the third scrum of the match and eventually I planted a simple punch to the jaw, but Tommy kept coming back for more. In desperation, as half-time approached, I went in with the sleeper. I was half-hearted. I wasn’t sure I could actually put the blighter away.
But I got him exactly in the sweet spot. I rate it as my best tackle ever. I knew he was gone as soon as I applied the pressure. I turned off his power at the mains and blew the nearby substation in the process. And no surprises, after the win Tommy was the first to buy a beer in the Kennel Club Bar. That was the sort of bloke he was!
The rugby league wrestling coaches never forgot the impact of those great World Championship Wrestling holds. Today these senior rugby league mat men see the human body as a canvas on which inflicting pain can be taken to a whole new James Bond villainish level. Tackling has become so hotly contested that the rugby league head office now offers tackle clinics in the off-season on how to put a player away correctly. Although in recent seasons it is difficult to tell if anyone attends these summer schools.
The brutality of the game and the heroic deeds of players have created legends. There have been many very dangerous moments in the history of league up to and including death. The unpredictable violence leaves many Australians scratching their heads, wondering whether the code actually has a future in its current form. No matter how often they change the rules, it’s still a collision sport of enormous ferocity. It will never be table tennis.
Part 2
HEROES
‘AUSSIE JOE’ BUGNER: THE NAME SAYS IT ALL
The madness begins ear
ly and rumbles on over twelve magnificent rounds with a heavyweight belt on the line.
THE ‘SWEET SCIENCE’ IS one of Australia’s oldest European sports. The first recorded stink in Sydney took place on 8 January 1814. Two well-credentialled convicts, ‘Pummelling’ Johnny Parton and Charles ‘Soapy’ Sefton, pulled on the gloves for this original Down-Under ding-dong.
The bout was illegal, so the style of hype and promotion that normally accompanies a heavyweight clash in today’s boxing circus was simply not possible. This was an underground, under-the-radar event. It was a fight club happening long before a fight club was considered normal.
Even though no one knew about it, this was a big occasion and a large crowd gathered to see what the prize fighters had cooked up. The gloved two had set themselves to go the distance. Australia’s first title bout was decided over fifty-six rounds. The boys punched themselves to a standstill. After two days in the ring the fighters were still keen to swing on, but the crowd was drifting away and there was a big undercard of age divisions still to go. The referee, Earl ‘The Fog’ Gust, did the sensible thing and declared a winner. The hand The Fog held aloft was the bloodied fist of Pummelling Parton.
The colony was an early adopter of sport. This heavyweight bout was staged four years after the first horse races were run on the exciting Hyde Park layout. A race meeting that set free the great Australian tradition of the punt.
Pummelling Parton (aka John Berringer) was part of the convict cohort on the Fortune, which blew into Sydney in June 1813. Pummelling was a very fine tradie, ticketed in the break-and-enter crafts. He was originally sentenced to death, but the judge allowed the southpaw to swerve around the big sleep and booked him a passage on a boat set for a long sea voyage. The judge made an example of Parton as he did for hundreds of others who came before him for stealing a loaf of sourdough or blowing their nose in public. He commuted the death sentence on many occasions to transportation to NSW for life.
Pummelling was a very fine tradie, ticketed in the break-and-enter crafts.
The colony was lucky to get Parton. He was a trash-talker with that ‘What are you looking at?’, ‘Want to step outside and go on with it?’ style of brutal patter. He had a collection of stock lines and insults for all occasions.
His opponent on the day, Soapy Sefton, aka ‘Stinky’, aka ‘Nobs’, aka ‘Putrid’, aka ‘Sluggo’, appeared before a Liverpool judge who booked him into a hammock on the Fortune. He was a second-storey man and found guilty of nicking stuff. He liked lifting promissory notes and, well, anything else that could be lifted. Soapy just loved lifting. He was sentenced for the big drop by his Honour Justice Cedric Slime, known around the lively Liverpool court scene of the era as the ‘one-way ticket’ man. His Honour loved gallows humour, often offering the wretched crim in the dock a choice of the rope, the lash or the long, slow goodbye. It was pick-a-box justice!
Both Parton and Sefton had plenty of time to cook up the first fight wheeze on the Fortune. They got to know each other’s technique as they made the long, slow trip to the penal colony of NSW.
This great bout – some critics say it was the original and best – began a rich tradition of people trying to make the transition from other sports and other trades to boxing.
The history of Australian boxing is a saga of great moments of vigorous action followed by big gaps where nothing much went on. Fight game critics and punchers on the sniff for a bout were always declaring it cactus or about to drop off the twig. Just when the nation thought the whole dust-up caper was slipping into the cold, hard ground, another champ with a good left-right combination, another trainer with ideas about losing weight or another promoter with a ute-load of money would get a bee in their bonnet about reviving the shebang and begin breathing new life into the lifeless corpse. It is a recognised truism of the fight caper that everyone is just one fight, one punch, one bout away from retirement; likewise, the whole wheeze.
It is a recognised truism of the fight caper that everyone is just one fight, one punch, one bout away from retirement; likewise, the whole wheeze.
So many great names have been associated with the thump-and-count-to-ten profession. The Marrickville Mauler, Jeff Fenech, the Russian-born Sydney-based former world champion, powerhouse Kostya Tszyu, the featherweight Johnny Famechon, the five-time world champion Lester Ellis, the heavyweight, cruiserweight, light heavyweight and middleweight Tony Mundine and his son Anthony ‘The Man’ Mundine, also no stranger to the light middleweight, middleweight, super middleweight and cruiserweight divisions. The Man had the trade of rugby league before he pulled the gloves on. There were others called up to the ring like Rocky and Lucky Gattellari, Jimmy Carruthers, Spike Cheney and the Waters boys to name a few of the local fight heroes.
Lionel ‘Slim’ Rose was a world champion bantamweight and the first Aboriginal boxer to win a world title and be named Australian of the Year. What a record! Slim pulled on the shorts for fifty-three bouts, forty-two wins (twelve by KO) and featured in eleven losses. Lionel won his first professional bout at the age of sixteen outpointing Mario Magriss. In February 1968 he defeated Fighting Harada over fifteen rounds in Tokyo for the world championship. The win catapulted the youngster from Warragul, Victoria, to national fame. At a reception at the Melbourne Town Hall in 1968, 100,000 fight-mad Victorians turned up to greet the champ. He put Melbourne on the world stage.
Lionel had a musical career after farewelling the ring. His chart-topping song ‘I Thank You’ became an unofficial national anthem. These two great champs, Lionel and Harada, were reunited as part of the 1991 VFL Grand Final festivities at Waverley before the bounce. It was a great get for the VFL. The fighters joined singer Angry Anderson in the centre square. There was talk of a rematch, as in Rose v Harrada 2, before the bounce, but mercifully sanity prevailed.
Recent Australian ringside adventures include Mundine v Green encounters followed by the fight of the century between Queensland powerhouse Jeff Horn, a primary schoolteacher, and Filipino senator Manny Pacquaio, in 2017. The visiting senator had never fought a well-tutored schoolteacher. He had no idea how to handle a fit, determined Brisbane-based chalkie, and it was no wonder the punching senator was found wanting.
Peering into the distant past there’s a long line of greats lured into the ring for a swing by the prospect of putting away a pug for a plump purse. These were different times, when money was much harder to come by, and punching an opponent in the head was a great way to earn a year’s income. Greats emerged like Les Darcy, the middleweight who held the heavyweight belt, the all-rounder Snowy Baker, Dave Sands, the boxer with ‘the educated left hand’, and the featherweight ‘Young’ Griffo, who never aged – he was always ‘Young’.
All Australian blokes of a certain vintage think they have one punch in them. Of course, concussion and resulting brain damage are greater concerns today than they were when all sport was groping around in the dark wondering why the big stars of yesteryear often went wobbly in later life. This simple idea that a punching was not recommended by the wellness industry was yet to dawn on the majority of the sporting community.
All Australian blokes of a certain vintage think they have one punch in them.
Curiosity and charity bouts between the stars of the football codes, Australian Rules and rugby league in particular, now plug the widening gaps on the fight night calendar. Footballing boxers like Cronulla Shark Paul ‘The Stool’ Gallen, former AFL Saint and Swan Barry ‘Noodles’ Hall and Sonny Bill Williams have intrigued match-makers and fight fans love the added battle of the codes dimension to the rumble.
Fighting footballing ‘mates’ call each other out on television footy shows like 100% Footy and Sports World where it is easy to get the ‘I hate you, you big pillow!’ vibe going. The pre-fight weigh-in war of words is traditional fodder for the tabloid press. The build-up to fight night features articles on how great the fighters look at training and how great the players were in their footy days, when they were fifteen years y
ounger.
Then the fighting footballers without much training are in the ring swinging at each other, raising money for research into how the brain is affected by big knocks and punches to the head. Critics moan about joke footballer bouts ‘demeaning the sport’. This latest outrage of the ordinary proves boxing is cactus and society does not give a fig about the sweet science anymore. But the fight game somehow staggers on, and in no time at all the Olympics are on again and Australia is sending our best team ever.
IN THE LONG HISTORY of Australian boxing one name stands out from the historic ringside ruck! That name is Joe Bugner, aka ‘Aussie Joe’ Bugner, aka ‘Atomic’ Joe, aka ‘Vigneron’ Joe.
Joe was a great role model for younger generations. Anyone just out of school, with a rock-solid melon, looking to get into a go-ahead sport with opportunities to travel and a big pay day attached, could do a lot worse than embrace the Bugner legacy.
‘The Teenage Tornado’, Joe Bugner was born in Hungary. ‘The Tornado’ tag was ironic as Joe was a slow mover who did everything with deliberation. The family fled to England in the mid-1950s when the Russian tanks turned up in Budapest uninvited and declared the party over. He was a large kid and willing. As a teenager he excelled at sport, becoming the British national discus champion in 1964. After cleaning up the competition in the age divisions of rotate and release, he began an action-packed journey through sport, which eventually brought him to the fight game.
In the ring, Joe had a defensive style. He was exceptionally cautious, but ring watchers agreed the kid without much footwork looked durable. Like most boxers, Bugner did not like smelling the glove, let alone tasting it. But his record speaks for itself. He stepped into the squared circle eighty-three times for sixty-nine wins, of which forty-three were knockouts. He drew once, and the maths suggest he lost thirteen times.
