The Gladiators

by Norman Tasker

  The talent was impressive. Big Kel O’Shea was a seasoned international who commanded a presence on the field not all that much different from his international second-row partner Norm Provan. He ran hard and he tackled hard and he was a handful for any forward pack opposed to him. Occasionally his sense of humour would make it hard for his team-mates. One of his favourites with me as we ran up in defence was to telegraph ‘I’ve got this one,’ at the top of his voice as he ran to a supporting player. The result, of course, was that the ball carrier would not pass but run straight at me, and I ended up having to do all the work. Often they were big forwards, and Kel thought it was a great joke.

  Noel Kelly joined Wests in 1961, travelling down from country Queensland with his wife Chris in a beaten-up old ute. He was the toughest man I ever played with, and an absolute joy to have in your side. He copped plenty of flak for being a bit untoward with the biff, but the fact was he stood up to anybody who wanted to pick on us, and everybody knew that he would . . . including the referees, unfortunately. Ned was a little spectacular in some of the retribution he meted out, but he was a very important cog in the Wests wheel at that time, and he became one of the Magpies’ greatest sons.

  He had plenty of other workers in the Wests pack of those years who were always at his side. Nev Charlton was a wonderful prop who played for NSW but should have done better. Blokes like Kevin Smyth and John ‘Chow’ Hayes were great workhorses, and in those years we introduced a kid to the second row who was only one year out of the juniors and had absolutely no fear. Jim Cody was a total firebrand.

  Cody was not all that big, but he always seemed to take on the biggest and the best of the opposing forwards we faced. Norm Provan was a special target. Cody was just nineteen, but he so infuriated Norm in one match against Saints through the club rounds that Norm retaliated and was sent off. Norm never got involved in that sort of stuff as a rule, and was never sent off, but Cody was such an irritating combatant he even got under Norm’s skin. There was another famous occasion in the 1962 grand final when Cody clocked Norm just before half time, cutting him above the eye and rendering him sufficiently out of it that he could not address his team at half time and was still off with the pixies when the teams returned to the field. Billy Wilson had taken over the captaincy. We were back on the field only a minute or two when Bill found Cody close enough for a square-up. Cody went down, and Wilson got sent off. It forced Norm Provan to stagger back on to the field. Even a man down, Saints still got us 9–6. It was closer than the year before, but another defeat just the same.

  Our backs were a combative lot through those years as well. Peter Dimond was in the Australian team at just nineteen years of age, virtually as soon as he arrived at Wests. He played his first Test against England in Brisbane in 1958, having been one of four players sent off in the NSW game a few weeks earlier. Apparently he had no qualms about battling it out with the notorious English lock Vince Karalius, and by the time I joined Wests a couple of years later, his reputation as a tough guy as well as a powerhouse winger or centre was well entrenched. He was a great player, extremely hard to stop, and he seemed to save his best for the games he played against England. When I was Australian captain at the end of Great Britain’s 1962 tour, we played him in the centres, and he was like a midfield rock against some very inventive opponents. Like so many of those characters who were ruthless on the field, he was a softie off it.

  Harry Wells, of course, was the senior citizen of our back line. He was a long-term Test player, enormously strong and the ideal foil for Reg Gasnier in a long partnership they had for NSW and Australia. Don Parish was a Test player who did a great job for us at fullback, and Gil McDougall also was very effective in the centres. McDougall was one of those blokes who didn’t give a fig for reputations and didn’t spend too much time thinking about his game. He just ran when he had the ball and knocked opposing players over if they ran at him. But he always seemed to do it right, and curiously one of the big results he got for us through that period was that he was one of the few players who could keep Reg Gasnier under reasonable control. Gaz was carving teams up right, left and centre through the early ’60s, but I’m sure he didn’t like playing against McDougall, who simply hit him as if he was a kid in the park.

  In the final analysis I suppose we did well through those years, despite our three grand final defeats. We were a clear second best, and while we were well beaten in the first of the grand finals in 1961, we were right in the second a year later, and should have won the third in 1963 but for some cruel refereeing. For me personally it was a slow start at Wests, but even the abject disappointment of 1963 could not detract from some wonderful years. It was a very competent side, and it developed a marvellous spirit that lives to this day.

  16

  THE SUBTLE SHADES OF GREATNESS

  IN THEIR ELEVEN-YEAR premiership run from 1956 to 1966, St George played 222 games and lost only 34 of them. In no season did they lose more than four games, and only in four of those years did they lose that many. Of their 183 victories, a large majority were overwhelmingly decisive, and they were always at their best when it counted most, especially in grand finals. The eternal question of what made such greatness has many answers. The simple one is that they had in one team through that period perhaps a dozen of the greatest players of their generation. More particularly, in John Raper, Reg Gasnier, Graeme Langlands and Norm Provan they had four of the greatest of all time. But there was much more to it than that. It was no accident that those players came together as they did, and it was no accident that they were fashioned into the most efficient winning machine in the history of the game.

  NORM PROVAN

  St George had some huge advantages in those years. We had exceptional players, and the way we were coached from the time that Ken Kearney arrived put us well ahead of the field. But by far the biggest edge the Saints had on other clubs was the way the club was run. Saints had a bunch of administrators who were just exceptional, and they saw to it that the supply of high-quality players was organised years ahead. Baden Wales was secretary of the club when I joined and later was the driving force in setting up the leagues club, and he was the start of it. Then came Alex Mackie, Laurie Doust, Len Kelly, Glynn Price, Jack Proops and various support troops whose dedication to the running of the club made it what it was. There was no self-importance, none of the egos you see in some sporting officials. They were committed to making the club successful, even when hard decisions were required. Their first consideration always was the club. They made sure the players were comfortable and happy, and they related well to everybody.

  The biggest influence of all, however, was Frank Facer, who took over as secretary in 1956 and ran the club like a military operation for the next 22 years. His role had none of the trappings of the big time that similar positions have now. It was an honorary role when he started, and even when Frank became one of the first full-timers, it was a long way from the big-money job it is today. They called them secretaries then. Fancy titles like chief executive officer were a long way off.

  When Facer took over in 1956, players still took their gear home and did their own washing. It was no easy task with St George whites, either, I can tell you. And Frank had to operate under the old residential qualification rule, which meant players had to play with the club in whose designated area they lived. Under those rules, building up the sort of team that Saints finished up with took some imagination. Luckily Frank had plenty.

  He certainly developed a great understanding of the ins and outs of real estate. Some club officials had multiple boarders, at least as far as official addresses were concerned. For most of us it was a case of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’, but Frank had more tricks up his sleeve than a country magician. The residential qualification system was one of those old rules that grew out of a different time. It was made to protect smaller clubs from the ravages of bigger clubs, particularly in ensuring that juniors weren’t poached en masse. It was also geared to enco
uraging clubs to make sure they looked after juniors and so grew their own players. But it was set up at a time when Sydney was a much more insular place, and people were less mobile. By the 1950s a greater percentage of the population was able to afford a car, and hopping about town was much easier than it had been when all the rules were written. It was no big deal to live in North Sydney and play for Saints, or vice versa.They abandoned the rule in 1960, and given its universal abuse, that wasn’t before time.

  Facer’s ability to manage and manipulate the residential rule was only one of the great benefits he brought to St George as the club started to build its premiership run. Facer had been a player when I joined in 1950. He had been hooker in the 1949 premiership team, and in four years he played 75 first-grade games. He had already had a long career with North Sydney. I was in the lower grades in his final year with Saints so I didn’t get the chance to play in the same team. But he was a bit of a legend to all of us at Saints at that time, particularly newcomers like myself. He had a lot of fire in him and got into plenty of fights—and not always just on the field. It was that knockabout nature that stood him in such good stead when he became secretary. He ran the club with an iron hand.

  Facer was one of those straight, no-frills operators who worked out what needed to be done and did it. He was very direct and didn’t have much time for sentiment. He was very hard to get a dollar out of, very blunt in his negotiations, and he made sure that none of us knew what anyone else was getting. I’m sure Saints players of that time, despite our success, were in many cases nowhere near as well paid as they were in other clubs. Yet Facer developed a fierce loyalty in the club. Everybody respected him and liked him, despite his occasional hard-line gruffness, and his attitudes had a lot to do with developing our winning spirit. But where he really excelled was in the planning he did, his knowledge of footballers, and the steady stream of top-line players he was able to bring to the club.

  An important figure in the recruitment processes for which Facer was the front man was selector and long-time St George committeeman Laurie Doust. Doust had a keen eye for players, but he was also dedicated to the job. He scoured the bush, kept an eye on the juniors, watched the lower grades in the clubs we played against, and when a good prospect offered he went interstate in search of new strengths. Doust and Facer kept an eye on the resources we had, monitoring players as they got near the end of their careers, assessing form on a continuing basis, and working out just what holes would likely need to be filled. By this process they were looking at players for our needs two and three years ahead, and the supply chain was unending. Kevin Ryan is a case in point.When Facer first approached him he was a Wallaby playing with the Brothers club in Brisbane. He told Facer that he wanted to join Saints but had promised another season at Brothers so would not be available for twelve months. Facer said ‘fine’, gave him a down payment there and then, and welcomed Ryan the following year at the start of seven outstanding seasons.

  The names that came to the club are legendary. Men like Eddie Lumsden, Graeme Langlands and Ian Walsh from the country, Brian Clay and Johnny Raper from Newtown, Harry Bath and Dick Huddart from England, Kevin Ryan and Elton Rasmussen from Queensland . . . the list just goes on and on. And every one of them was a huge success. There was no awkward emotion in Facer’s work, either. When Raper joined the club, for instance, it put the writing on the wall for my youngest brother Peter, who had worked his way up to become the club’s top lock prospect once Poppa Clay had moved to five-eighth. Raper quickly took that role, and though Peter played on for a couple of years, getting four or five games a season—sometimes partnering me in the second row—it was clear there was not much future for him at Saints.

  It was a disappointment to me, and Facer knew it. Two of my other brothers, Ian and Don, had also played in the lower grades with Saints, but Peter was the most promising, and cutting short his opportunity at the club was never going to be welcomed. Facer, however, was not inclined to let Peter go and have a crack elsewhere. He was more intent on keeping St George’s depth strong. In the end he relented, perhaps to keep me from getting too stroppy, and Peter went on to a successful career with Balmain, including the captaincy and the 1969 premiership.

  Many of the outstanding gains of that time are well known. Reg Gasnier emerged from the Renown United junior club to join Saints in 1958, and after a year in President’s Cup and a few lower-grade games, he was in our top side. The word had been well and truly out about Gaz for some time. He was such a schoolboy star at Sydney Tech High that they reckoned he might have played for Australia at cricket as well. He was one of those exceptional talents who are good at just about anything. As his career developed, however, he probably exceeded even the highest expectations that his school days suggested. The local junior league was a top supplier of good players, particularly outstanding backs. John Riley, who partnered Gasnier in the centres for a few years, was another brilliant player, and Johnny King and Billy Smith too were local lads who were always going to be Saints. Add the likes of Clay, Lumsden and Langlands from other parts, and the attacking power we had is pretty obvious.

  But to my mind there was a more important element in the Saints story that made the early arrival of Killer Kearney and the subsequent acquisition of Harry Bath the big turning points in the club’s progress. Kearney determined that the only way St George could develop a football style guaranteed to win was to establish absolute mastery in the forwards. To Killer the game was a tough, confrontational battle in which the team that established the strongest forward base would always dominate. When Bath arrived, his rare capacity for clever forward work helped develop the skills that added creativity to confrontation, and in my time at the club I do not believe any forward pack ever got the better of us, expect perhaps for the disastrous game against England in 1962. We just weren’t ready for that lot, and they were a team above and beyond anything you would ever see in a Sydney competition. They belted us 33–5.

  The influence of Kearney and Bath dictated many of the signings that Doust and Facer rounded up through the winning years, and there was a particular emphasis on front rowers. To Kearney and Bath, that’s where everything started. We were well off for front rowers from the start, with strong, honest workers like Kevin Brown, Bryan Orrock and Harry Melville on deck through those early premiership years. Monty Porter joined as another workhorse, and later Robin Gourley, but the key men who gave Saints so much of their forward grunt in those years were the inimitable Bill Wilson and Kevin ‘Kandos’ Ryan. Wilson had left the club after the 1956 premiership win to go bush, but he came back in 1958 and stayed for another five premierships. Kevin Ryan was on deck from 1960 until the last grand final win of the run in 1966.

  Billy Wilson was a unique footballer. He saw it almost as his duty to get into three or four fights a game, and most of his reputation is built around the images of his toughness. He was certainly a hard man. They called him ‘Captain Blood’ for the way he would sacrifice himself to the battle, fearlessly and without any inhibitions. He was always playing on with damage that would have scuttled a lesser man—he once completed about three-quarters of a game with a broken arm—and it seemed almost compulsory that he finished every game with blood covering him somewhere or other. But there were many sides to Billy Wilson. He was an excellent ball player, for starters. He could position runners and he could assess where the play needed to go, and it was a bit of a shame that the subtle side of him got swallowed up in all the fights and the mayhem. He started off as a lock and he often had to cover in the backs when we lost someone during a game. He always handled the job well. He was also a very funny man off the field—one of the club’s great characters, and universally loved.

  Many stories have been told of the Wilson trait for cutting off people’s ties.Wearing one when Billy Wilson was around was asking for trouble. He would strike when you least expected it. On one occasion I had stopped at the traffic lights just before the Captain Cook Bridge as I was driving on Taren Po
int Road at Miranda, when Bill approached me from the side of the road. He had just been walking by. Before I even had time to react he had grabbed my tie, thrust it between his teeth, and in one almighty rip rended it into a couple of pieces. It didn’t matter to Bill whether you were heading for an important meeting, or trying to impress a client or whatever. He just couldn’t resist your tie.

  Billy always meant well. In the 1962 grand final, the young Wests forward Jim Cody had flattened me just before half time. Cody was a bit like an old American gunfighter who wanted prize notches on his gun belt, and apparently I qualified because he never let up on me. Anyway, he got me good and proper this day, cutting me around the eye and leaving me very groggy. When the team came into the room at half time, I was prone on the treatment table and pretty much out of it. Billy had taken over the captaincy, and from the little I can remember of what he said in the half-time talk, and what was relayed to me afterwards, he made a stirring speech about being responsible and not retaliating against Cody for what he had done to me. This was a grand final, after all. Winning was the important thing, he said. Just play football.

  It was all very sensible, the sort of thing you might expect from a responsible captain with a grand final victory in sight. Only trouble was, as soon as Billy got back on the field he found himself in close proximity to Cody virtually from the kick-off, and he couldn’t help himself. He poleaxed Cody and was promptly sent off. I was still on the dressing-room table, just starting to come to my senses, when Billy returned, having hardly left. I was sufficiently conscious to work out the maths . . . no Provan and no Wilson left us two men down, and that would have made it too hard against a Wests team that by this time was starting to shape up as a very worthy adversary. I staggered back on, and we duly won 9–6. But it would have been a lot easier had Billy Wilson accepted the very good half-time advice that he had offered to everybody else.