NORM PROVAN
Looking back, it was a stroke of luck that I didn’t get graded with Easts in 1949.Timing is everything, I suppose, and another year in the juniors at Woronora did me no harm at all. In fact, the tutoring I received from Noel Hollingdale taught me about proper preparation and the sort of dedication required to win.They were lessons I never lost. As I worked my way through that final season in the juniors, Saints were on the march. They finished up premiers that year, and although Souths dominated the competition for a few years after that, I think that was the season that gave St George the pride it developed in the years that followed.
As a seventeen-year-old I became a devoted follower of that team. They had some absolute giants playing at the time, and they captured all the things that I loved about the game. They were tough, but they also played with flair. I remember Johnny Hawke at five-eighth as an inspirational player. He dominated the grand final against Souths. He was a great organiser, and he worked the backs so well that the wingers Ron Roberts and Noel Pidding scored two tries each. Matt McCoy was a fantastic centre—he was big and tough and had a reputation as one of very few people ever to get the better of Newtown’s hard man Frank ‘Bumper’ Farrell. McCoy apparently knocked Bumper out in a game in the middle 1940s. Saints’ other centre was Doug McRitchie. His brother Bill also had some issues with Bumper a few years earlier when his ear somehow got tangled up with Bumper’s teeth and emerged a little reduced in size. It was one of the great controversies of the time.
Saints had everything in that 1949 side. Some old-timers were still saying, even when Langlands and Gasnier and the rest of us were stringing all those premierships together, that it was the best of all St George teams. I can still see big forwards like Jack Munn, Charlie Banks and Jack ‘Dutchy’ Holland ripping in. There is no doubt it was that team the inspired me to be a Saint. The hooker—and a pretty wild one he was too–was Frank Facer, who ended up as the secretary that built the Saints through their premiership years.
Nobody at that time ever expected things would turn out as they did between 1956 and 1966. But it was a great time to get involved with the club. I tried out in 1950. I was still eighteen, but I was picked in reserves, dropped to thirds for a while, and finished up back in reserve grade at the end. My last lower-grade game was the reserve-grade final against Balmain that year. They had some pretty hard heads on the way down who had played a fair bit of first grade, and they didn’t show a lot of respect for an opposing second rower yet to turn nineteen. I got a bit of a hiding that day, and although we were beaten we got close. In the end it was a fulfilling year. I can’t say I enjoyed getting belted, but I did enjoy the hardness of the contest, and I thought I was ready for first grade. So did the selectors, fortunately. I played 20 games in 1951, more than anybody else, and my career was underway.
I still had plenty of help from people who knew how top-grade football worked. Noel Hollingdale watched me play my first game in first grade, and I made a beeline for him afterwards. I had felt good about it, and I was probably looking for a bit of a pat on the back, but Noel sort of frowned and thought for a minute. ‘Not bad,’ he said, ‘but you need to improve your pace. You need to be quicker.’ Noel’s neighbour Jim Stansell was involved in athletics with Randwick Harriers and did some coaching, and he and Noel started working on how I might get a bit faster over the ground. Their first solution was to start me training in sprinter’s spikes.
They took me to a boot-maker in Crown Street in the city who had made a lot of football boots for top players, and made them to their individual needs. He fashioned a pair of spikes for me. They were the normal set-up, with long spikes on the front sole and nothing on the heel, and they fitted like a glove. I used those spikes for years. They definitely improved my pace, and years later, when I finished up captain–coach at Saints, I insisted on the team doing quite a lot of training in spikes as well. You had to be careful—there was no contact stuff since the spikes could rip you open—but I believe they made everybody quicker. Ultimately, training in spikes made a difference to the way St George played.
Those early years at Saints brought us modest results. South Sydney were the guns in the early 1950s, with blokes like Jack Rayner, Les ‘Chic’ Cowie, Clive Churchill and Co. dominant. They were a very good team, and they won four premierships in my first five years in first grade. They beat us in 1953 in what was effectively the grand final. That was the last year before they made a grand final mandatory—they only played one if the minor premiers had been beaten in the finals. They had a second bite of the cherry. But the troops were gathering for Saints. Ken ‘Killer’ Kearney joined the club in 1952, and his career after that was perhaps the most influential of any in those premiership years.
The biggest thrill for me through those years of the early 1950s was getting to play with some of the blokes I had admired so much in the 1949 side. After my first year as a lower-grader, they took me on a country trip with all the first-graders. That was a privilege they reserved for young blokes who they reckoned had a first-grade future, and it was a great experience. Saints did a lot of those country trips, playing football in country towns and helping the game grow in the bush. Through the 1951 first-grade season I was able to play with so many of the ’49ers. Johnny Hawke was still there, and Noel Pidding, Jack Munn, Ron Roberts, ‘Dutchy’ Holland and Matt McCoy. I had been so captivated by those names through 1949 that playing with them was a real experience. I wasn’t overawed as such, but I certainly felt under pressure to perform. You couldn’t mix it this company and give anything less than 110 per cent.
We came third in ’51, and the experience of it was marvellous. Our biggest game was the semi-final against Souths, who were far and away the best team and had won the minor premiership virtually unchallenged. We beat them 35–8. Some people said it was the biggest upset in league history. I remember it as a very hard game, violent even. Our winger Ron Roberts and lock Noel Mulligan were both knocked senseless, and Souths’ five-eighth Greg Hawick played most of the game with a broken jaw.
I learned a lot from those Souths blokes, many of whom I later played with in rep football. Jack Rayner was as tough a character as you would find, their lock ‘Chick’ Cowie was a very clever player who never stopped, and they had pace and brilliance in the backs with men like Churchill, Hawick and winger Ian Moir. I was also learning a lot in that first year about the culture at Saints.
Saints were minor premiers in both lower grades in 1951, and the club won the club championship, so momentum was already building for what was to follow. Part of that success was the fantastic administrative base the club had. They treated their players with respect, but they led from the front. I was paid a grand total of 19 pounds for my first lower-grade season in 1950, but after that I never let on about the money the club offered me. It would have felt like betrayal of a St George system—mostly organised by Frank Facer—in which nobody knew what anybody else was getting. It stayed that way for my entire time at Saints. It was one of the philosophies that kept the club happy and harmonious. Money was never a consideration to distract the club from its main purpose—playing winning football. Pride always came before pay.
10
A COCKY WEE GORDON
CHATSWOOD OVAL, ON SYDNEY’S leafy North Shore, is a picturesque ground with a history that belies its inconspicuous suburban setting. Don Bradman terrorised railway commuters there in his time, hitting sixes onto the tracks that run not far beyond a longish mid-wicket. Cricketing giants like Charlie Macartney, Victor Trumper and Neil Harvey were regulars as linchpins of the Gordon cricket club.When the Gordon Rugby club came along, their first champion was Trevor Allan, who captained the Wallabies at 21, went off to England to play Rugby League, and won a legendary reputation with the Leigh club.
In 1954, Arthur Summons began his senior football career with Gordon. He stayed six years, made a couple of Wallaby tours, and won a reputation as one of Rugby Union’s finest players. It was a very different path from t
hat taken by Norm Provan, but it taught Summons many lessons, not least in the value of leadership. They stood him in very good stead through his Rugby League years.
ARTHUR SUMMONS
When I announced my decision to play Rugby Union with Gordon, it caused uproar in my family. My Dad was a dyed-in-the-wool Rugby League man whose devotion to the Mount Pritchard Rugby League club through my childhood years had been part and parcel of my upbringing. When I broke the news to him he was seriously displeased.
‘Why would you play that bloody game?’ he thundered. ‘It’s the worst game ever invented. I’d rather you played Aussie Rules than Rugby Union.’ The decision had been made, I told him, and that was that. ‘Well, you’re on your own,’ he said. ‘I won’t be coming to watch you play Rugby Union.’ It was perhaps the only serious disagreement I had ever had with my old man. But I was eighteen and I figured I had to make my own decisions, and this one sat well with me.
When I got to play my first game at Gordon, however, I spied the nose hanging over the Chatswood Oval pickets. I was delighted that the old man had changed his mind and come along to support me. He had brought Mum with him, and though he was grudging about it, he seemed to enjoy the game and the aggressive sort of football that Gordon played in those days. After the match I introduced him to the boys. He joined in the singing in the dressing room. He liked a beer, which fitted in well with the Gordon men because they absolutely loved a beer. He kicked on afterwards to the party that always followed in somebody’s house and he had a whale of a time. By the time Mum got him back on the train late that night for the trip back to Cabramatta, his legs were like jelly. I don’t think Dad missed a game after that. He loved the Gordon social scene. He was totally in tune with the spirit of the place. And as he watched his son work his way up to a couple of premierships and a career with the Wallabies, he couldn’t think of a better place for a Saturday afternoon drink.
When I eventually decided to switch to Rugby League with Western Suburbs after six wonderful years at Gordon, again the news of my plans did not go down well. Dad had changed his tune somewhat from the day six years before when I told him I was going to play Rugby. He was bitterly upset again, but for very different reasons. ‘How can you leave those blokes?’ he whined. He was shattered. It was as if the whole fabric of his social life had been ripped from him.
Gordon was certainly a club that was different from anything I had ever experienced. One of the early surprises came in the dressing room before my first game, when amid all the motivational tension of the immediate pre-game build-up they suddenly burst into song. It was thundered out to the tune of Buttons and Bows, and to a novice having his first experience of senior football, it was just plain weird.
‘Let’s go down to Chatswood town,’ they roared, ‘where the boys are wearing their brand new clothes, Gordon colours in jerseys and hose . . .’ It went on about the Randwicks being braw, the Eastwoods and all, and the cocky wee Gordon being the pride of them all. It was a bizarre thing. I couldn’t help thinking, ‘What have I got myself into?’
But it fired everybody up. There was a lather of intensity in that room that certainly was not reflective of a musical interlude. More like a Maori haka. They roared and ranted, making a din that was highly intimidating to the opposition in the dressing room next door. It was a tradition that was part of Gordon’s uniqueness, and week after week, season after season, it sent them into battle with fire in their nostrils. It wasn’t the only song that stirred Gordon’s soul. As a coach who rebuilt the club in the late 1940s, Herbert ‘Slab’ Allan had fashioned the club, originally named for a local suburb, after Clan Gordon in Scotland. He had the jersey redesigned to follow the colours of the Gordon tartan, and they rewrote the Scottish folk song ‘A Gordon for Me’ to better fit the footy culture. It all built a fierce spirit within the club. Their crowds were bigger than anywhere else, success came in spades, and great careers were made.
Slab’s son Trevor was captain of the club as the resurgence grew. He became one of the finest Wallabies ever, thrust into the captaincy of the 1947–48 team at 21 and leading Australia to a Bledisloe Cup win in New Zealand in 1949. By the time I joined Gordon, ‘Tubby’ Allan had moved on to be a hugely successful Rugby League player with Leigh and Other Nationalities in England, but he returned to be coach of our grand final side in 1955.
‘A Gordon for Me’ became an anthem that was ritually sung in a packed dressing room after every game. This led into an orchestrated sing-song, in which players of both teams would crowd into the Gordon room and let rip. It was pre-Beatles in my day, but there was plenty of Elvis and Sinatra, and some surprisingly good singers who would stand on the bench above the crowd, beer in hand, and lead the tumult. Again, it was uniquely Gordon, and it engendered a spirit that was as powerful a part of their winning ethos as anything else the coach or the players did.
My days at Gordon were like a six-year honeymoon. I had met Pam Laidlaw at teachers’ college in 1953. We married in 1956 and set up our home at Roseville. David was the first of the kids to arrive in 1958, followed by Gillian, Catherine, Janine and Kellie over the next fifteen years. We slotted into a social scene at Gordon in which everybody was in the same boat. The husbands would play their footy, sing their songs and drink their beer, but the women were part of everything else we did. The Saturday-night ritual was always the same. We would rotate the houses at which the parties were held, and all the kids would be bundled up and bedded down on the floor, behind the piano, in any nook and cranny where we could find a spot. It was generally chaotic. But these were gatherings built around the people. There was no pretension, no fancy entertainments or exotic food. Just good people, lots of beer, lots of laughs, and in the final analysis, lots of love. The Gordon people were great people, full of warmth and humour, and totally supportive and considerate of each other. The friendships built there have never faded.
Mind you, they were different animals altogether when they got on the football field. They had a ferocious approach to winning football that was ruthless in its intent and occasionally cruel in its execution. There was no way the Gordon forwards of the time—tough-as-teak characters like Hugh ‘Snow’ Naughton, Ian ‘Bomber’ Miles, Ken Yanz, Tim Bristow, Ross Hannon and our captain–coach Bob Davidson—would ever die wondering.
Bob Davidson was a born leader who rallied his men constantly and let them know exactly where they stood if there was any slackening off. There rarely was. Woe betide anyone who tried to take on the Gordon forwards in those days. There was a much more liberal attitude to the rules of battle than there is now, with the modern emphasis on video surveillance and aggressive judiciaries. You had to be able to fight to survive, and nobody could fight like the Gordon boys. Foremost among the combatants of those days was Tim Bristow, who joined us in the late 1950s and played in the second row. Tim was a strapping character who claimed to have been the model for the original Chesty Bonds ads, and he was a fine player, too, when he kept himself under control. But most of the time he was out of control, and it probably cost him a career as a Wallaby.
Bristow was what you might term a colourful Sydney character. He was a private detective who specialised in divorce cases, and won a fearsome reputation for knocking down doors and catching people in compromising situations. He knew lots of people, from the leaders of Sydney society to the darkest of criminals, and ultimately he finished up in jail, his reputation entrenched as a ‘hard man’ of the Sydney criminal scene. On the football field, Tim was a magnet for trouble. In 1959 Bob Davidson had retired as captain but remained coach, and I took over leadership of the side. We played a game at Woollahra against Eastern Suburbs late in the season that we had to win to make the semis, and as always it was a hard game against hard men. At one point their centre Barry Tilley flattened our centre John Palmer with what we all thought was an unwarranted stiff-arm tackle.
I gathered the team for a quick conference while Palmer was being returned to the land of the conscious, and a consensu
s was reached that we would sort out Tilley next time we got him in a ruck. Bristow couldn’t wait. As play resumed, he found himself close enough to Tilley to catch him with a short right that dropped him like a stone. All hell broke loose. I could see that matters would quickly get out of hand, so I told Bristow to go to the back of the field, well away from the action, and stand with our fullback Maurie Graham. The Eastern Suburbs reaction to this piece of subtle diplomacy was to kick repeated up-and-unders deep to Bristow and to chase them in waves. Graham intercepted quite a few of them, but it didn’t deter Easts. They still charged at Bristow, no matter where the ball landed. Tim seemed to enjoy it. My next recourse was to tell Tim to leave the field, since we still needed to win and his presence clearly was not helping. Tim went to the sideline only to be told by the coach to get back on. We survived somehow to win the game. But the aggro remained, and the after-match function in the Easts hut was powder-keg tense.
In my latter years in Rugby League it always amused me when the hard men were talking and the comparisons were being made, and the general consensus was that Rugby Union was ‘soft’. Not so, although there were also times when the spirit of the game was unshakeable. As battle raged in that match at Woollahra, I was clobbered at one stage and went down hard. Easts forwards Dave Emanuel and Stuart Scotts, who had been Wallaby team-mates in Britain a couple of years earlier, bent down and hauled me to me feet with an encouraging ‘You’ll be right, little fella’. Even in the helter-skelter of a game like that, the wider context of lifelong friendship was never compromised.
Another hard man at Gordon who would have measured up with Noel Kelly or any of the league tough guys was Ken Yanz. Yanz was a breakaway, and I remain thankful that through six years in Rugby with Gordon, New South Wales and Australia, I never had to play against him. Ken was a fearsome tackler who was a surprise selection in the 1957–58 Wallabies and played one Test. But at Gordon he was the stuff of legends. He hammered people, occasionally in a manner that in modern times would have him drummed out of the game. Perhaps the most spectacular of the Yanz indiscretions occurred on a grey day at Chatswood Oval in 1958, at the end of a match against Sydney University.
The Gladiators Page 7
