Almanac Rugby League: My love affair with the Bunnies

 

 

 

Growing up, I always had this sense that there was something fundamentally daggy about Australia, even if I was too little as yet to grasp the beauty and profundity of that uniquely Australian word.

 

Dad was what was referred to by demographers as ‘unskilled labour’, meaning he worked long hard hours to pay the bills and provide his family with life’s essentials. He was not outwardly political, but I learnt at an early age that he voted Labour (before the party dropped the ‘u’) and couldn’t stand a bar of ‘Pig Iron’ Bob Menzies.

 

But ‘Pig Iron’ Bob was always there, running the country, fawning over the Queen and sucking up to whoever captained the Poms on the MCC’s latest tour of Australia.

 

The St George Dragons were always there, too. Year in and year out they’d win the comp, with two Newtown juniors, Johnny Raper and Brian Clay, among the Red V’s best players. It was as though their dominance went hand in glove with the conservatives’ control of a complacent, sleep-walking nation.

 

How many times did my father drive me and my younger brother Lonno in his blue FJ (BAA 478 – strange that I can recall that numberplate when I can’t remember what I had for breakfast this morning), from Tempe to Henson Park to see Dad’s beloved Bluebags cop yet another hiding from the Dragons?

 

Then 1964 happened. My sister Jacqueline took me and Lonno to Sydney Stadium to see the Beatles. The Fab Four opened with ‘Long Tall Sally’ and, though the archives say that the performance lasted only twenty minutes, my life was changed forever. The scales fell from my eyes, and I understood only too clearly what ‘daggy’ meant.

 

Coinciding with this primal moment in my evolution as a footy tragic was a trip to Redfern Oval. Souths had run second-last in 1963, but were on the improve. It was a cold grey Saturday arvo (the draw was made so that four games were played concurrently on the Saturday, with Sunday’s fifth game of the round usually scheduled for the Sydney Sports Ground).

 

The Bunnies were lead onto the field by the Union convert, debonair Jimmy Lisle – and I was smitten straightaway. Was it the colours – the vibrant cardinal and myrtle (unspoilt by hideous sponsors’ logos)?; the tough hombre with rolled-up sleeves, John Sattler?; the gangly lock with the long stride, Ron Coote?; the flashy indigenous winger, Eric Robinson?; or was it the raw enthusiasm of the diehard Rabbitoh supporters? It was all of those, of course, but what stirred me most was the idea that these young men were here to knock down the walls of the Establishment. On the backs of their jerseys was the promise of change – the tyranny of the Dragon will be brought asunder, it assured me.

 

In 1965 they got close. 78,000 people – including me, Dad and Lonno – crammed into the SCG to see Norm Provan’s side hold the red and green challenge at bay, winning 12-8 and securing their tenth straight premiership.

 

The boys from Redfern missed out on the semis altogether in 1966 (did they take it for granted that they would go a step further? did they believe too much of the hype surrounding them?), but in 1967 they at last brought to an end St George’s reign.

 

Sadly, fate did not plan for them to de-throne the Dragons in the Grand Final – Bobby McCarthy took an intercept and sprinted 80 metres to sink Kevin Ryan’s Canterbury-Bankstown 12-10 to clinch the J. J. Giltinan Shield that day.

 

I could only watch it on B/W TV, but I was sitting in the Sheridan Stand at the Moore Park end of the SCG a fortnight earlier when Souths beat St George in the major semi-final – the game that took the winner straight into the decider and forced the loser into a play-off with the Berries (as they were still known).

 

The score won’t come to me, but I’ll never forget the try that sealed the deal. About twenty-five out, Elwyn Walters ran the blind from dummy-half. Ducking under a coat hanger from Ian Walsh, he made half a break before finding support in Coote. As the cover got to him, Coote passed inside to McCarthy who surged over the line.

 

The floor of the Sheridan Stand was made of wobbly timber planks, and at moments such as this the crowd would riotously stamp their feet on them. The noise was awesome, like rolling thunder. The Dragons were never going to survive the storm.

 

Menzies had retired from parliament, a referendum was passed in May that, shamefully late, saw to it that Eric Robinson and his mob were included in the national census and, with everybody playing ‘Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts’ Club Band’, the dragon slayer had been slain.

 

The Great Daggy Era was over.

 

To read more on the Almanac by John Campbell click here.

 

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Our writers are independent contributors. The opinions expressed in their articles are their own. They are not the views, nor do they reflect the views, of Malarkey Publications.

 

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