Almanac Books: Review – ‘The Conquerors’ by John Craven

 

Join Roger and fellow Almanackers in a lunch with John Craven in Geelong on 28 June. Details and bookings are Here.

 

 

 

 

 

John Craven’s epic 779 page work The Conquerors is a tour de force which traces the careers of 100 local Geelong and district sports stars who competed in a total of 33 different sports over the past 150 years.

 

It is a compulsory library acquisition for sports nuts everywhere. More specifically, for the Geelong based sports nuts among us it is a veritable “treasure island” volume.

 

Just as a teaser, the top ten in batting order are as follows: Lindsay Hassett, John Landy, Russell Mockridge, Jack Hawkes, Trish Fallon, Ian Redpath, Carji Greeves, Graeme Lloyd, Simone McKinnis and Peter Doak.

 

Not only is the extensive background on each of his subjects vast, but also, the treasure trove of detailed information on their parents, extended families and supporters is, in some cases, just as extensive. Craven’s research underpinning this primary source history is exhaustive. It is the genesis of a highly informative and reader friendly narrative.

 

Not surprisingly, this family and friends network support structure theme emerges as one of the common signature features of all stories.

 

Olympic rowing medallist and former Geelong Grammar girl Rebecca Joyce reflects simply that “…without friends and a supportive coach and crew you are nothing really – just a shell gliding along in the water…”

 

Elsewhere, we learn former Gnarwarre Primary School lad Graeme Lloyd, who later pitched for the New York Yankees in two World Series baseball epics, started his career locally then graduated to Melbourne competition but only after his farmer dad would crutch sheep until three o’clock in the morning so he found time to drive him in his battered old ute. Clearly, Graeme never forgot that.

 

“The bemused Noel was standing in the gravel driveway one mild day in 1994 when a gleaming silver Toyota Land Cruiser glided towards him. Puzzled, he ambled up the vehicle and recognised his alighting son.

 

“Geez, whose is this?” Noel enquired.

 

“It’s yours,” Graeme responded as he presented his dad with the keys. It was the year after he’d made his American Major League Baseball debut with the Milwaukee Brewers.”

 

(Family photo provided to author)

 

And then there is the audacious yarn about the unnamed clandestine ‘support staff’ who helped Jack Grant ‘the Midnight Express’ win the 1938 Stawell Gift off 11-1/2 yards. Six months earlier he had been best on ground as a dashing half back flanker in Geelong’s 1937 VFL flag win over Collingwood.

 

Keen to restrict his protégé’s odds from shortening too much, his trainer Sam Barmby binds to strict secrecy a couple of local amateur runners “whose names it would not be fair to disclose” and arranges the group to train at Barwon Heads and Queens Park golf courses after dark. Grant later acknowledges their assistance. “Those two amateur runners at Geelong were jolly fine fellows to come along and assist in my trials.”

 

Once details eventually “…hit the streets in The Sporting Globe’s 20 April edition, pro running aficionados dubbed Grant “the Midnight Express.”

 

He opened at 16/1 but was a prohibitively short 1/7 when he reached the final. Most bookmakers had stopped taking bets earlier. Despite a slight stumble near the finish of the final, the textile worker from the Geelong Soldiers’ Mill still had enough in hand to win by a yard in a slick 11.7 seconds on “a rain-sodden track”.

 

 

(From personal photos provided to author)

 

 

Perhaps though, the greatest strength of The Conquerors lies not so much in its abundant primary source information but in how Craven skilfully uncovers for his readers the feelings of his subjects at key moments in their careers. We learn they may well be elite athletes but, underneath it all, their vulnerability and their human behaviours through triumphs and adversities are the just same as yours and mine.

 

The “bruising final” of the 1991 World Netball championships in Perth saw Australia defeat archrival New Zealand. With 30 nerve racking seconds left on the clock we are one point in front.

 

Old Bell Park High girl Simone McKinnis takes up the story at Wing Defence.

 

“It came down to the last 30 seconds; the tension was incredible. Everybody was under pressure. Both teams made errors. In that last play I had made a mistake, but our goal-keeper Roselee Jenke saved me. We had possession and I threw a pass that New Zealand got hold of; Roselee fortunately got the intercept and we got it back, so I remember it vividly. It turned into one of the best moments of my life, but it could have been the worst.”

 

Failure and despair versus triumph and elation. Joseph Conrad’s classic novel Lord Jim is an entire work about this contest. We have it laid bare for us here by the participant herself in 83 words.

 

In this vein, your reviewer’s favourite chapter features Lara gymnast Trudy McIntosh’s struggles with coaches and officials and how she terminates her gymnastic career aged 16.

 

“The lead up to Sydney 2000 was a shit show. It was a horrible atmosphere; we were constantly being yelled at. We were being shamed at weigh-ins. I was told I had put on weight and was too heavy; I was only 39 kilos (a slightly underweight BMI for her 147 centimetres incidentally). The coaches were telling us we weren’t good enough …Five seconds before take-off for the vault an Australian coach gripped my upper arm, dug in her fingernails and whispered in my ear “you better stick this or you have no future.”

 

After an unsurprisingly sub-optimal team performance, Trudy returned to Victoria with her teammates and “did all the good fun things we dreamed of, like going to the movies and instead of getting just popcorn we’d get a whole tub of ice cream and Tim Tams and eat them all at once.”

 

Not long afterwards, “I kissed a boy for the first time, I got belly-button earrings and had my first period. I was 16 and all those things came at once. Three weeks later they asked me back into the gym. I went in for an hour and said: “Nah, I’m done, I’m not wasting my life in this place. I’ve got bigger and better things to do.” Then I walked straight out…and completed the final two years of schooling at Matthew Flinders Girls Secondary College. My first day in Year 11 was my first full day at school since Grade 3 and I loved it. I got to do normal things.”

 

Simultaneously, all this is desperately sad yet emphatically triumphant in equal parts! Few of us are elite gymnasts but we empathise wholeheartedly with her mixture of human feelings.

 

(Personal photo provided to author)

 

To complete the happy aspect of this narrative, Trudy subsequently became a successful aerial snow skier narrowly missing the 2006 Turin Winter Olympics with a cruelly timed major knee injury after an ill-timed jump in training a couple of months earlier. She later starred around the world in the famous Cirque du Soleil for six years and is now happily settled with her husband and two children in Coffs Harbour.

 

And finally, just for good measure, Craven settles the real story behind what many of us have thought for years was the myth that Alistair Lord won the 1962 Brownlow Medal only because he avoided suspension when his identical twin Stewart was mistakenly reported instead.

 

The back page headline of the Sun News Pictorial of 16 May thundered ‘Alistair or Stewart: twin cleared after strangest Tribunal!’

 

Alistair takes up the story ‘with a grin’.

 

“I’d have been in trouble, I reckon, if the umpy had got me when I pinned one on (Richmond’s) Basil Moloney in the second quarter. That’s when I thought I could have been reported. Stewart gave him one in the third quarter and the umpy thought it was me again. He mixed up the second quarter with the third quarter.”

 

Case dismissed!

 

 

Join Roger and fellow Almanackers in a lunch with John Craven on 28 June. All details and bookings are Here.

 

John’s book can be purchased via email Here, or at the lunch on the day.

 

 

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