The Gladiators

by Norman Tasker

  We had to play Wests on the Tuesday and Balmain on the Thursday. We won those, then made it to the minor semi-final against Canterbury on the Sunday. We were clear second favourites for that but managed to win a grim game 6–5. It meant we had played four games in ten days, and to say we were knocked about is to put a happy face on it. It was a crazy way to sort out a premiership final series. Manly chewed us up 22–12 the following week. It was a bitter disappointment at the end, but it had been a great year nevertheless, restoring the club’s credibility and building a huge fan base that was to come into its own a few years later when Parramatta won three premierships in a row.

  The season was not without its trials. At one point I had to drop Denis Pittard, Bob O’Reilly and John Quayle—all of them ultimately internationals—and that caused some mild rebellion. I was used to the hard-nosed attitudes of Killer Kearney and Frank Facer, and it seemed to me there was too ready an acceptance of second best at Parramatta in those days. I needed to make and continually reinforce the disciplines involved in winning football, and I was also determined that I wouldn’t let injured players carry on and just hope for the best. Plenty of them would do that if they could, but it always seemed to me that a player who was completely fit was better value than an unfit champion, even it if meant dropping a little in available talent. The one player who got really hot under the collar about being dropped was Quayle, who of course made the World Cup team later that year and in later life became a powerful and progressive figure as general manager of the NSW League and the ARL. John had been carrying a knee injury and the team was in need of a shake-up anyway, but he could not see my reasoning and let me know it in no uncertain terms. I left them out for two weeks, and when they came back, the whole team had a new fire in its belly.

  •

  John Quayle looks back on the pivotal Parramatta year of 1975 and the lessons learned, and he has no doubt of Norm Provan’s impact on the Parramatta story that subsequently unfolded. They were in the grand final the following year and unlucky to lose to Manly, and by the early ’80s, with Jack Gibson at the helm, they had won three premierships in a row.

  ‘There’s no doubt that Norm Provan taught Parramatta what it took to be winners,’ Quayle said. ‘When he dropped the three of us, it made the point to everybody that nobody was exempt from the sort of discipline that was required to perform. To that extent he changed the culture. Bob O’Reilly was a terrific forward who was already an Australian Test player, but he wasn’t averse to turning up for training having had a few beers earlier in the day. His career was on the slide a bit by 1974, but Norm turned him around. Made him so much better.

  ‘When I look back on the run we had through the finals, the effort just gets so much more impressive. Sudden-death games every couple of days at that level is hard going, yet we did it and came up against a fresh Canterbury team and knocked them over. It said a lot for the year we had and the standards that Norm Provan had set.’

  NORM PROVAN

  Bob ‘The Bear’ O’Reilly was a very good player and a fascinating character. I got on really well with him, and I liked him. At the end of that Parramatta season we had a trip to New Zealand planned, and we wanted to take the best team we could as a sort of end-of-season reward, but also as a springboard into the following season. ‘Bear’ told me at one point that he wanted to pull out of the trip. I explained to him that it was not a holiday trip, that we had some decent matches arranged, and that if he pulled out others probably would as well. I asked him not to.

  ‘OK, Sticks,’ he said. ‘I’ll do a deal with you. I’ll go on the trip if you promise to play half a game.’ My last game had been the 1965 grand final ten years previously, and at 44 years of age I was never going to be able to make a lasting contribution to a fair-dinkum game of Rugby League. But it was important to me that Bob O’Reilly be part of that team. ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘You guarantee you will come on the trip, and I’ll play half a game.’ I don’t think I ever expected I would have to, and as the trip unfolded I had forgotten all about it.Then, in our match against a combined South Island side, Bob O’Reilly arrived in the dressing room at half time and with great ceremony pulled off his jersey, threw it at my feet and declared, ‘Your turn, Sticks’. There was no getting out of it. Unusually for the South Island of New Zealand, the day was quite warm, and they didn’t call O’Reilly ‘The Bear’ because he was slim. He was large, hot and sweaty, and pulling on his jumper was more of an issue than playing in the game. Same with his boots, which fitted sort of, but not really. On I went.

  The match had not been going to our liking. As often happened overseas, we seemed to be playing the referee as well. My arrival was a subject of great mirth within our team, and some bemusement for the opposition. A lot of them probably didn’t remember me or had never heard of me, which would have left them scratching their heads at the old guy who had suddenly appeared. There is always a danger in such circumstances that you’ll be spotted, or treated with the young-gun attitude that something needs to be proved against a player of another time who thinks he can still hack it. The marvel is I absolutely enjoyed my last 40 minutes on a football field, despite the long lay-off. I had never stopped training, so that clearly helped. And it all came flooding back. I didn’t exactly feel 22 again, but I didn’t feel 44 either. I managed to score a couple of tries, and I felt really good about being cornered into one last game of football. Once it’s in your blood it stays there, I suppose. That was it, though. I was never tempted again.

  The decision had to be made at the end of 1975 as to whether I wanted to continue in coaching. There were a few things to be considered. I lived in the Sutherland Shire for starters, and I was finding the drive to Parramatta for training something of an ordeal. I like driving, and in those days I drove pretty hard. The sad fact is that I got to know personally most of the Highway Patrol officers who covered the route I drove. I got sick of being pulled over with that ‘Not you again, Norm’ look and a sympathetic chat about the football as I was booked. At the same time my business was demanding more and more attention, and though it is a bit of a cliché, the demands of work, family and football were getting pretty hard to manage. But I was also convinced Parramatta would be in very good hands if I chose to leave, and in the end I think that was the decider.

  Terry Fearnley was coach of the Parramatta reserve-grade side that won the competition in 1975. He was an excellent coach, but the really striking thing about him was how much he wanted to kick on and how devoted he was to making Parramatta great. I think I actually felt bad about holding him back. I decided to stand down, Terry took over, and by the following year Parramatta had made their first grand final. They lost out 13–10 to Manly in an enthralling decider in which the Eels scored two tries to one. It was a fine feather in Terry Fearnley’s cap, and he was voted coach of the year. Ray Price had already arrived by 1976. Sterling, Kenny, Eric Grothe, Steve Ella and the rest weren’t far away. Good times were around the corner.

  26

  SHARKS ON THE PROWL

  THE SUTHERLAND SHIRE, in Sydney’s south, is a place with a strong sense of community. Some say it is insular, and that ‘Shire people’ have an identity that sets them apart. There is no doubt that the beaches and the idyllic lifestyle encourage in the people who live there an extravagant devotion to the area. Norm Provan lived and worked in the Sutherland Shire throughout his football days, and felt its impact as much as any of his neighbours. In his time, the St George Rugby League club embraced the Shire, so that’s where he played his football. In 1967 the Cronulla–Sutherland Sharks entered the first-grade competition, and in 1978 they came calling, appointing Norm Provan their first-grade coach. For Provan, it was an abstract sort of homecoming, but a homecoming nonetheless. He helped lift them to the grand final in 1978, and even today rates the experience as the most satisfying achievement of an extraordinary Rugby League career.

  NORM PROVAN

  It is interesting to watch the reaction when people ask me about
my most satisfying time in league, and I tell them it was my coaching days at Parramatta and the Cronulla Sharks, and especially at the Sharks. The common response is, ‘What about all those premierships at Saints?’ and I try to explain the difference. The Saints years of course were amazing and very special, and I loved them. But I was part of a team of extraordinary players who even today are recognised among the best of all time. Even though I played a role as captain–coach in four of those premierships, I was always only a part of a great team. Many people contributed to that era. When I took on coaching at Parramatta and then at Cronulla, it was different. Both clubs were in the doldrums at the time. Both of them needed something to get them going. I was able to impart some of those old St George standards. They responded well and improved in leaps and bounds. As far as personal satisfaction goes, that did it for me.

  I was thrilled when the Sharks came into the competition. The area had demanded it for a long time, and for me it was home. So the decision to take on the coaching job when it became available in 1978 was not a hard one. The Sharks had finished short of the finals the previous year, but it seemed to me they had some very worthy players and were a club on the rise. Steve Rogers had proved himself a classic international and gave them some real sting in the centres. Wingers Rick Bourke and Steve Edmonds, and our five-eighth Barry Andrews, were good support, as were the rest of them. But importantly they had a tough-looking forward pack capable of mixing it with anybody. The Sorensen brothers Kurt and Dane, Steve Kneen, Paul Kahn, Greg Pierce . . . they were all worthy footballers who wouldn’t take a backward step.

  We did well that first year. We finished in the top three, and won the preliminary semi-final against Manly and then the major semi-final against Wests to be first into the grand final, and we felt pretty good about ourselves. There were small delights along the way. When we played St George, who had won the premiership the year before, I walked past a group of their administrators, all men for whom I had the highest respect. They were very civil, but there was that little smile on their faces that said ‘you upstarts have no chance’. Beating them that day was one of my sweetest experiences. It had been an even competition through the season, with no standout. There were two replays through the finals—Manly and Parramatta drew the minor semi-final and Manly won the replay—and our grand final with Manly also finished in a draw and had to be replayed. Both Parramatta and Wests had been narrowly beaten along the way in a competition that really could have gone to anybody. At Cronulla I drew some flak for moving Rogers to lock forward for a while. Rogers had proven a very good Test centre in partnership with Mick Cronin, but he also had a terrific ability to read play and he was a devastating tackler.

  I had always considered a footballer a footballer, and one of a coach’s prime duties is to work out where a given player would best advantage the team. It was like that with Graeme Langlands and Billy Smith in St George’s best days. Moving Langlands from fullback to centre only opened up new options, and though Billy Smith was the world’s best halfback, he could do equally well at centre when the occasion required. Rogers at lock was a bit more dramatic, I suppose, and Steve didn’t particularly warm to the idea, but he was still the best lock in the competition that year. He eventually went back to the centres, but it remains a move in which I had great confidence.

  The finals that year were racked with controversy thanks to referee Greg Hartley, who managed to get himself appointed game after game despite all sorts of eruptions. Parramatta were so upset with him they tried to get their semi-final replay against Manly declared a no-result and played again. Goodness knows how they would have fitted in yet another replay. Of course it didn’t happen. But they were furious that Hartley had sent off Ray Price for an offence of which he was subsequently found not guilty. They also objected to the fact that Manly had scored a try on what was later confirmed as the seventh tackle, that a fair try to John Peard had been disallowed, that Parramatta had three times been allowed only five tackles, and that they had been penalised off the park. There’s not much doubt that Parramatta were hard done by, and the whole affair created an environment through the finals that was fairly toxic.

  We got to the grand final by defeating Wests 14–10 in the major semi-final, but the seeds of later difficulty were sown in that match when our captain Greg Pierce managed to get himself sent off and suspended. We were already without prop Dane Sorensen, who was also suspended. It was a disappointing way to finish the season, since I had adopted with Cronulla the same principles I had adopted with Saints: be as tough as you like but don’t start anything and don’t fight. I can’t recall the justice or injustice of the circumstances of that game against Wests, but I do know we were not the sort of team who should have lost key players to suspension for big games. We had a few chances in the grand final through Steve Rogers breaks early on, and both teams tried to slot field goals at the end when we were locked at 11–11. Nobody could. It was the second drawn grand final in two years, and nobody seemed to be happy.

  Backing up for a replay a few days later is never easy, but it was tougher this time. The departure of the Kangaroos was imminent, so we only had until the Tuesday—three days later—to prepare. We were badly knocked about. Apart from the two suspended players, we lost to injury our hooker John McMartin and five-eighth Barry Andrews, both of whom were key men. We felt very stretched going into that game. Manly in fact had a much tougher road than us with a string of five sudden-death games, but they seemed to get through unscathed. And there was another factor. Hartley again was the referee. It was an ominous sign for me fairly early in the game when Jack Gibson, who was sitting with me, made an instant judgement. ‘You can’t win,’ he said, and he simply got up and left. Gibson had been an arch critic of referees from way back. Some thought him a cynic, but there was no better Rugby League mind, and he seemed to pick trends that others missed. Right or wrong, he had made up his mind that the Manly game would suit Hartley’s view of things more than ours. As matters turned out, I don’t think the referee made a critical difference. We just weren’t in it. Manly led 15–0 at the break, and though the second half was tight we couldn’t make any impression. Manly scored three tries. We did cop a lot of penalties early, which dictated much of the game’s momentum, and one of Manly’s tries again was scored on the seventh tackle. But it would be less than honest to whinge about that. They were much more on the job than we were and they deserved the win. It was a disappointing end to a great season.

  The following year saw us in the finals again. We finished third behind St George and Parramatta, but we finished poorly, losing to Parramatta in the semi-final qualifier and then Canterbury in the minor semi-final. Again, a disappointing end. But for me personally, I was glad that the two years had been a period of real progress for Cronulla. It was satisfying, since I felt I had made a contribution and given a lot of good young players a sound base on which to build careers. But for me, it was really the end of serious Rugby League involvement. The following year I headed north to Cairns, took over a caravan park, got involved with cattle farming and property development, and in many ways started a new life. It didn’t change my attitudes, though. I loved Rugby League and was grateful for the privileges it brought me. I am grateful for the privilege it brings me still. I suppose I can thank John O’Gready for that. His photo and the trophy it inspired have kept me close, no matter how far away I am.

  27

  CALL OF THE BUSH

  WHEN ARTHUR SUMMONS RETURNED from the Kangaroo tour of Britain in early 1964, his coaching credentials were sky high. The tour had been his first coaching job, but in winning the Ashes he had displayed a capacity for control, discipline, tactical awareness and strategic planning that put him at the top of his craft. Summons afterwards had many fine experiences as a coach, and was back in charge of Australia in the series against England in 1970. But most of his coaching after the Kangaroo tour was done in country New South Wales, where the contests were less sophisticated than in the city, if no
less fiercely fought.

  ARTHUR SUMMONS

  With the Kangaroo tour behind me, I had no other thought than continuing with Western Suburbs and having yet another crack at wresting the premiership off St George. Wests made me an offer to captain–coach the side, which despite my reservations about the captain–coach role I would have taken had they offered some security with it. It was the Wests practice to make their coaching appointments annually, and despite their assurances that they would not upend me after one year, I didn’t think that would work. I already had a pretty clear view about how coaching worked. It was OK on a tour when you were together all the time and training was very concentrated. You could do things. Get patterns and disciplines established. You had time. In a club I couldn’t see it being like that. I reckoned it would take three years to get everything as you wanted it to be.

  I explained my philosophy. I thought three years the ideal coaching term. Time enough to do what needed to be done, but not too long so that they were sick of you. I don’t know how a bloke like Wayne Bennett managed to coach the same team for 20 years or whatever it was. I remember many years ago having a drink with Jack Gibson and talking that theory over with him. Three years minimum, three years maximum. Whether it sank in or not I have no idea, but I noticed that Jack never coached a team for more than three years, even at Parramatta when he won three competitions in a row. Anyway, Wests wouldn’t come to the party with a three-year contract, so I kicked off 1964 as captain of the team with Jack Fitzgerald retained as coach.

  It did not start well for me. The knee that I damaged on the Kangaroo tour had come good, but in an early game against Parramatta, their five-eighth Ivor Lingard got me in one of those throw-tackles, a forerunner to the Cumberland Throw, I suppose. My legs split awkwardly, and though there was not a lot of pain as such, when I got up and tried to run I found only one leg was working. It didn’t take long to realise I had done some serious damage to my groin. I went off, was told to go back, and limped about in a way that was no help to anybody. I tried to train on and returned for a game against Souths, but I could only manage about three-quarter pace and it didn’t take long for them to sort me out. When one of their blokes ran past me with ease, I thought it was time to leave. I was booed off and pelted with fruit. The Wests fans were not a very understanding mob. I think I managed only three games to that point, and as things turned out I did not play for Wests again. It was an unhappy way to end what had been a marvellous time with the club.