The Sports Factor

Australia's Rugby League competition is about to celebrate a centenary of big hits, runaway tries and a bit of biff. A hundred years on the working man's game is woven into the fabric of community, class and recreation across north-eastern Australia.

Transcript

This transcript was typed from a recording of the program. The ABC cannot guarantee its complete accuracy because of the possibility of mishearing and occasional difficulty in identifying speakers.

Mick O'Regan: This week we are thinking about 100 years of big hits, of crowds screaming for a bit of biffo and everyone thinking the bloke with the whistle must have got it for Christmas.

Rugby League. Now if Aussie Rules is a game of speed and space, and football is like chess with a round ball, Rugby League is like a hammer on a nail, a game of centimetres where taking the ball forward is a bone-jarring excursion into the limits of body contact. No wonder so many people have loved it for so long; even when their team completely disappears or the most unlikely people get the job of promoting the game.

Archival Excerpt of 1944 Rugby League commentary.

TINA TURNER SINGS 'Simply the Best'

Mick O'Regan: The inimitable Tina Turner making a bold statement about Rugby League in the 1990s.

In the next week or so, the National Rugby League competition will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the first club game played between Eastern Suburbs and South Sydney way back in 1908.

From the outset, League's been the working man's game, played in the mining communities of northern England and in the suburban backyards of Sydney and Brisbane.

Neil Cadigan is a veteran Rugby League writer and analyst, and this year is in charge of the media side of the NRL celebrations. He's also a lifelong fan.

Neil Cadigan: I grew up a Parramatta supporter and remember the days standing on the gravel at Cumberland Oval and watching Bob O'Reilly and the Thornetts of the late '60s. Naturally the 81 Grand Final victory for Parramatta - I was actually living in Tasmania at the time and missed that. My first-ever game I remember watching on television of a night was the 1970 World Cup Final from Headingley, in England. It was the first-ever game telecast live both in England and Australia. I remember sitting up with my father at midnight, watching that, and it is regarded as one of the most brutal games ever where Bob O'Reilly and John O'Neill, the front rowers, took an absolute pummelling from the English forwards, but we won that game.

Mick O'Regan: And winning Test matches was to become a definitive part of the attraction of the code. But at the very start, Rugby League was more about Gold than glory.

Neil Cadigan: It's very similar to the game in England, which formed on a similar basis in 1896. They called it then the Northern Union, it was mainly miners in the north of England who obviously had the same situation: couldn't get compensation for time off work; that certainly was the driving factor in Australia, but it was coupled with a general dissatisfaction in Rugby Union from those in the game, who saw it as very much an establishment and a class distinction organisation who were at the time earning vast amounts of money through income of gates etc., and the players felt they were passing none of that down through the game.

Players, for example, when they had to tour Interstate for New South Wales and Queensland and also play internationals, weren't getting compensated or even getting reasonable allowances for their cost of doing that, so it was a general dissatisfaction across many of the players, and really the sealing point was securing Dally Messenger who was the superstar of Rugby Union at that time, to get him across in August 1907. And the founding fathers were Victor Trumper, who was obviously a well known cricketer at the time, and James Giltinan, who was an entrepeneur. And Henry Hoyle, who was a Labor politician. And they were co-opted by the dissatisfied players and got themselves involved.

The key moment was signing Dally Messenger to play against a New Zealand touring side who was leaving New Zealand to play the Northern Union professionals, as they were regarded at the time. And on their way through they played 4 games in Australia. And once Dally was signed up that added a lot of credibility and confidence for the other players to come across. Rugby Union certainly, and others thought it was going to be a passing phase and wouldn't last a year or two, and Rugby League had its tough times early on, but within three or four years, the popularity and the crowds of Rugby League overshadowed Rugby Union.

And here we are a hundred years later both games existing in very different forms, but if it wasn't for those three gentlemen, I mentioned, their foresight in getting Dally Messenger across maybe it would never have happened and we'd all still have the one hybrid Rugby Union game at the moment.

Mick O'Regan: Neil Cadigan, the Media Co-ordinator for the NRL Centenary Celebrations.

Like so many episodes in the past 100 years, a decisive moment for Rugby League turned on the actions of a major start with a big popular following.

Forget the latter-day heroes like Arthur Beetson, Wally Lewis or Andrew Johns, in the first decade of the 20th century, one player summed up why people wanted to watch Rugby League, Dally Messenger.

[Archival Excerpt]

Dally Messenger: If a young man has a natural ability as a footballer, my advice is to keep yourself fit by clean living.

Mick O'Regan: Ah, the more things change ... Dally Messenger, dispensing the sort of timeless advice that makes Rugby League so attractive.

His decision to defect from Rugby Union lifted the profile of the new competition and he became a magnet for the media.

[Archival Excerpt]

Reporter: You must have played Rugby Union as well, then.

Dally Messenger: Oh yes, I played a lot of Rugby Union. I played Sydney Suburban, I represented New South Wales against New Zealand, and I done my famous dive of 1906, they reckon it will be never forgotten.

Reporter: Let me see, that New South Wales team defeated the New Zealanders didn't it?

Dally Messenger: Yes, they defeated - the first time they'd been defeated.

Reporter: You must have taken part in plenty of exciting games in your day, can you tell us something about the most exciting?

Dally Messenger: Well there's - I can just mention you two. The match against South Sydney on the Showground, Souths was leading us by a point. I marked the ball, took the mark just three yards outside half-way, and two yards inside the touchline. I brought it back and I happened to just put it over and win by 7 to 8, I think it was.

Mick O'Regan: Dally Messenger was a sort of one-man circus when it came to playing Rugby League, and as Neil Cadigan explains, he was simply crucial to convincing other talented Union players to follow his lead.

Neil Cadigan: Very much an individual player, and it's hard now 100 years on, none of us have obviously seen Dally Messenger play, but I read a great biography on him written by Sean Fagan recently, and a very unconventional player who did things like throw the ball over the top of a defender and regather it, and they've obviously changed the rules from that. He would dive over the top of players, and kickingwise, you know, we're talking about heavy leather balls at the time, was known to kick goals from 65 yards out, so just stood out as a great player, but very much individual and unconventional player, and the crowds just flocked to see him play. On the 1908-'09 Kangaroo Tour for example, in England, they actually had billboards in the towns they visited simply saying 'Dally is Playing', such was he a drawcard.

Mick O'Regan: But the crowds in England that came to see those games, they were interested in seeing Rugby League, or were they Rugby crowds that were going along to see Dally Messenger?

Neil Cadigan: Well funnily enough, at the same time, the Australian Wallabies were touring England as well. They drew better crowds at the time; it was a terrible winter, and a lot of bad weather and I think they played 46 games I think it was, the Kangaroos at the time. So it was a hard tour for them, because again, conservatively and traditionally, Rugby Union had a bigger popularity and a more widespread, national popularity than Rugby League at the time. So James Giltinan underwrote the tour and virtually sent him bankrupt, he came home, and he wasn't able to give the players all their touring expenses that he promised them.

So it was a massive gamble, and as I said, Giltinan came back bankrupt, and strangely enough while he was on the way back from Australia, Trumper, Hoyle and Giltinan were overthrown at the New South Wales rugby League Committee level and virtually lost their positions, because they were seen as being too individual and doing things their own way. So it was a tough time. And while we look in history as the first-ever Kangaroo tour.

It wasn't an overall success in some instances as far as crowds and performance, but what it did, it gave Rugby League in Australia credibility, that they could put on an overseas tour that we were worthy of being opponents to England, and shortly after that we were planning for England to come and tour here; that was again a great magnet for Rugby Union players to come across, and it was only a couple of years later that we signed virtually the whole Wallaby side en masse, with their Captain Chris McKivat, that was in 1911. And from that stage, that's when really the game had its second shot and got its credibility. But the first four years until then were a struggle.

Mick O'Regan: Of course there would be Rugby Union fans listening to this Neil, who would say that that 1911 signing of the Wallabies team set in practice something that lasted till the professionalisation of Rugby in 1996. But just to go back now, you've mentioned the turmoil at the top, featuring the lack of support eventually for people like Victor Trumper and Giltinan. How did that game go from establishing a successful, or reasonably successful overseas tour, to setting up clubs and the foundation clubs that emerged around 1908; what had gone on to get that level of organisation together so quickly that there could be a club competition by that time.

Neil Cadigan: Well August 1907 when again there was virtually a group of players who were agreed to break away from Rugby Union to play against the All Golds, so from that stage we only really had probably 15, 16, 17 players. They were naturally banned from Rugby Union, so straightaway there was a groundswell of rebel groups saying, 'OK, we've got nowhere to go, we've got to form equivalent Rugby League clubs', and during January and February in 1908, virtually it was a series of public meetings at Town Halls around Sydney where one by one, clubs were formed, and Hoyle, Giltinan, and Trumper chaired and obviously attended all those meetings, and it went from arguably Newtown have on their Minutes of January 8th 1908, as their formation and Glebe were in 1909, and it progressively went to of course North Sydney, Balmain, Western Suburbs, Eastern Suburbs, and North Sydney.

Mick O'Regan: And that spread through the suburbs of Sydney; would that be people being appointed, 'OK, I want you to go to the Eastern Suburbs and to start a Rugby League Club', or was there the nucleus already existing with people who were keen to sort of form themselves into a club to play into this competition?

Neil Cadigan: Mainly it was players of existing Rugby Union clubs who were set up in the same areas, so it was virtually dissatisfacted players in that area because obviously at the time it was a very geographical, existence. You know when you talk of lack of transport, and so obviously your cricket and Rugby League and Rugby Union were representative of those small communities within mainly a 10, 15 kilometre radius of Sydney's CBD. So virtually it was a breakaway from existing Rugby Union clubs formed into a Rugby League club.

What happened to Newcastle played in that first competition, so obviously Rugby Union was very strong in Newcastle and they were enticed to come down and travel down by train and play every week in Sydney, and then the Western Suburbs Rugby Union club, enough players there broke away to form what was the Cumberland club, who joined the League two weeks later in the third round of the first competition. Interestingly enough, St George was a strong Rugby Union area and they had a public meeting to set up a team in 1908 but couldn't get enough support. In fact they got a good attendance at that meeting, but not one player was willing to sign up because obviously there were threats hanging over them, and they weren't sure whether this was going to last or not.

And so it was 1921 before St George came into the competition, when it could have very well been 1908 like the other clubs if they just had a few, I suppose, gamer men on that night who would have crossed the floor.

Mick O'Regan: Neil Cadigan.

And the role of Dally Messenger and the wheeling and dealing that heralded the birth of Rugby League, will be investigated in Radio National's Background Briefing program on Sunday morning, April 20th by Stan Correy.

The jump from a small group of influential advocates to the mass participation via suburban clubs was made easier for League by the prospect of a few dollars to make ends meet.

Alan Whiticker is an historian, and the author of '100 Years of Rugby League'.

Alan Whiticker: When Rugby League came on the scene, there was the promise that a third of all gate money was going to go to the club, and I think that was very, very important, and the club could re-compensate players for lost time from work through injury. But the important thing is it allowed clubs to get a financial foothold in their local community. And in researching our book, '100 Years of Rugby League', it's amazing how in the early years there were so many press reports of dances and smokos, and picnics and country tours by established Sydney clubs, and of course a very important part of the foundation of Rugby League are trips to Brisbane and greater trips throughout Queensland. So they brought the community along with them, whereas I suppose previous teams, Rugby Union teams, may have been a little bit disassociated from the local community, here were local heroes getting a foothold in a game where the people owned the game, and I think that was very much an important selling point in the establishment of Rugby League 100 years ago.

Mick O'Regan: Now AFL fans listening to this program will be saying to themselves, 'But it's simply a translocated game, it's a game that grew up with miners in the Northern coalfields of England, you know, slogging it out in freezing conditions through their bitter winters', whereas AFL in the late 1850s and 1860s was a game developed for Australian conditions, it's a game of speed and space. Why hasn't the AFL as a national indigenous game, taken off in Northern Australia the way it has in the band of Southern States?

Alan Whiticker: I think a lot of it is social and cultural; the fact that there was bitter rivalry between codes, interstate codes. There was a wariness about the Melbourne game. But in saying that, in the early 1900s AFL had certainly got a foothold in both States, Queensland and New South Wales. I think maybe it was the climate and I think the other thing, the advantage that Rugby League had and in fact Rugby Union, was the prospect of international competition, Mother England coming over, the Kiwis coming over, AFL couldn't tap into that higher level of competition. And so you had the establishment of Test matches, and Test contests. Rugby League became a test of endurance, and a test of ability. And I think that's one of the aspects why Rugby League took off and pretty much overshadowed AFL and Rugby Union in the 1920s and '30s.

Mick O'Regan: How did clubs in small communities establish? Do you have any anecdotes about the process by which the Dungog Rugby League team or the Bangalow Rugby League team actually got themselves together?

Alan Whiticker: Well I know where I live in Western Sydney, in Penrith, you know Penrith 100 years ago was a country town, in fact it was a country town when I grew up there in the 1960s, we never saw ourselves as part of Sydney. And in doing a bit of research over many years, it's almost as if the Rugby Unionites changed over overnight. The ability to earn money, the ability to supplement your income, doesn't matter how low that income was, I think gave the players that extra incentive to play on weekends. Secondly, and I keep coming back to this, and it's not my own bias, it's I suppose what all Rugby League fans say: at the time, and even today, I think Rugby League is the superior game, and that might cause some argument, and probably has caused a lot of argument over the last 100 years.

From a spectator point of view and from a player's point of view, the involvement of all 13 players; it wasn't a 15-man game so the Rugby League field was much more open, the ability to stop and start and get yourself settled, the time when forwards took over and backs controlled the ball. I think in country areas of Queensland, country areas of New South Wales, the honest local player saw this as an opportunity, and then of course, if they did do well in the local team, they had the ability to go into the city and earn big money and big contracts, and you're really not to sniff at the incomes these players were gaining in the 1920s. I remember reading an Annual Report from one of the inner-city clubs here down in Sydney, the Glebe Club, and they did relatively well.

They never won a premiership but they made the semi-finals one year and every player, the top 30 players, got 250-pounds as their bonus at the end of the year. Now 250-pounds, you could have bought a house in Sydney for that. So the income incentive was something that couldn't be disregarded and I think it did give people in the country, especially when things were tough and times were tough, that little bit of hope, that little bit of sporting ability to climb those stairs of achievement and go into the city and make something of themselves.

Mick O'Regan: And then there was the prospect of higher honours, such as being selected to play in a Test match in the 1930s.

[Archival Excerpt]

Vic Hey: 1933 I made the first grade in six first grade matches. I was in the New South Wales side, and then lo and behold, a bit lucky, Ernie Norman couldn't pass the doctor and I was third selection to be selected for Australia to tour England, '33-'34. And boy oh boy, was that in the paper. I've got the cutting here Bill today where I was an electrician's apprentice and it says - about six lines, and I'm very proud of it: 'He's only an electrician's apprentice, but he's received his record shock' when I was selected in the team.

Reporter: Well how did you feel when you found out you were in the team?

Vic Hey: Well I felt a million dollars because in those days, I think I knew more to also by the way, about English football and greats, English great footballers, than I did about Australian great footballers, because the Old Man being a Pommie, and he'd been in Australia a fair while you know, and when we played Australia and they beat Australia, he'd say, 'Us Pommie lads were too good for you today, lad'. And of course when Australia happened to beat them, he'd say, 'Ha-ha, us Aussies were too good for those Pommies', so you couldn't win against him Bill!

Reporter: A nice each-way bet.

Vic Hey: Yes, for sure and certain.

Mick O'Regan: Vic Hey, learning about the relationship between sport and gambling.

Now taking on England at Rugby League became a benchmark of sporting ferocity. After a sustained period as the underdog, the Australian sides of the 1950s became the equal of the British teams, and the matches became epic battles.

Alan Prescott captained the Lions in the 1958 series, and afterwards spoke to the BBC.

[Archival Excerpt]

Reporter: It's said that you had refused to allow it to be known, of course, that you got a broken arm. Do you not think the Australian side twigged that there was something seriously wrong with you?

Alan Prescott: Yes, there's no question about that. And this is why - I've always one wish in life, that I would like to meet the chap I was propping against, and he was a lad named Brian Davies. He was the Captain of Australia and he really could have ruined my career, he could have virtually snapped my arm off. He knew this, he knew that I was packing with virtually a loose arm, it was just hanging, and he never once at all made any attempt to have a go at it.

Reporter: That I think is perhaps typical of the relations between teams on these Test series.

Alan Prescott: Oh yes, that's right.

Alan Whiticker: I think from an historical point of view, if you have a really good look at the different eras, obviously the '50s were a great period for Rugby League because Australia finally got on the same page as its international opponents and won the Ashes and it was the Clive Churchill era and the great sides of South Sydney in the early '50s and then St George in the late '50s. It was also an era when Queensland Rugby League was very, very strong. It was the time before the wealthy Sydney clubs with their poker machine dollars, pillaged all the good players from Queensland and brought them down to Sydney.

Really if I had to have a pick out of all the eras, I think the '70s were a great period for Rugby League, because you had the same 12 clubs competing. In 1970 there were 12 clubs, in 79 there were 12 clubs. And so if you're looking for a space of time for that ten years, competition was very, very tough. Of course you know, many clubs such as Newtown and Penrith weren't that competitive, but it was a period when Manly, chequebook contracts, South Sydney in the early '70s, and then the emergence of Parramatta and Canterbury later in the decade, it really was a decade where a lot happened, and Australia of course dominated international Rugby League after '73, and then absolutely went through the roof and international teams couldn't get anywhere near them for another 10 years.

Mick O'Regan: It was also in many people's eyes, Alan, a period when Rugby League became Thugby League, that people remembered that the Boyd tackles, and I remember all sorts of ferocious finals involving Manly and South Sydney and St George. Was it more violent, or was it just the way we remember it as being more violent?

Alan Whiticker: No it was a very brutal man-on-man game and there was a lot of thuggery in Rugby League, and the thing that cleaned that up I think was the advent of television because once they started televising club games, and you have to remember in the early '70s there was no coverage of club games, and the advent of colour television, where there was sponsorship money coming in to the coverage of Rugby League, then the pressure came on the TV channels and through the media onto the League to clean up. Because nobody wanted to see someone's head getting knocked off replayed five times at dinner time when you're watching the match of the day. And so I think that had a profound effect.

But I do have to say historically the New South Wales Rugby League was very slow in cleaning up thuggery. When you think of John Sattler having his jaw broken in the 1970 Grand Final down here in Sydney, and any Rugby League fan worth his salt knows about that. There was no player cited, there was nothing ever said, there was no apology to Sattler, and I've talked to John Sattler about this and he's very gracious and very intelligent in his response, and he said, 'It was just part of the game', and I think it took another ten years for that to be eradicated from the game, and it was the advent of a very tough judiciary in the early '80s that finally got the thug, the punch and the back play. And I think anyone who loves Rugby League doesn't mind the player, the man-on-man stink, in the heat of battle, players rushing at each other, but it was the behind-the-scenes thing that rubbed out a lot of good young players, and stopped a lot of good young players going on to further careers. I think it was a good thing that it finally got out of the game.

Mick O'Regan: How important do you think was parental concern in courting the careers of younger players whose parents simply said, 'I don't want you to play that game, it's simply too dangerous'?

Alan Whiticker: Oh, it was massive, and I remember growing up in the 1970s and I went to a Teachers' College in Western Sydney, they had a very good football team, and I remember the pressure on the local football club to sign up many of the guys that I went to Teachers' College with, and they were actually actively being advised 'Do not go to grade football, you'll get bashed.' And I think it was when Rugby League came out and publicly said, 'We're cleaning up the game', that's in the 1980s I think when the growth of junior Rugby League really went through the roof, and I think Mums and Dads realised that their kids were going to be protected, because there was a Code of Conduct, and Code of Rules that was going to be stuck by.

But in saying that, only a very small percentage of players ever got to first grade, but below that pyramid there were thousands of kids playing Rugby League on weekends, and I think the game needed to clean up its act to get those kids through the door.

Mick O'Regan: Of course the other huge boost Rugby League has received in the past 30 years or so, is the success of State of Origin football.

Now more so than other football codes, the rivalry between Queensland and New South Wales at Rugby League had a sort of inbuilt irritant: talented Northerners kept getting bought by rich Sydney clubs to sometimes reappear in blue jerseys as New South Wales players. But once the Origin formula was settled, the Queenslanders were ready to settle some old scores. Lang Park became the cauldron, and the crowd was legendary.

But initially, all the enthusiasm came from the Maroons.

Alan Whiticker: Down here in Sydney it was a non-event. In fact it wasn't even shown live, it was shown at a 9.30 replay and I remember watching it on television. And we couldn't believe how it had been accepted in Queensland and historically now, we know that Queenslanders had been waiting 20 years to get their players back into really dominating a New South Wales side. And so it quickly caught on, and there was a lot of opposition down here in Sydney to State of Origin because 1) the wealthy Sydney clubs didn't want to release their players, they might get hurt, they wouldn't be able to turn out for their clubs. Secondly, there was a lot of scepticism in the local media that as if Cronin and Beetson are going to tackle each other, they're in the same team down here in Parramatta, yet the opposite was true. The players tried harder, the players took each other on and I think what it did it took Rugby League to a new level, some may say open warfare, but it took the New South Wales-Queensland rivalry to a new level.

But what it also did, it actually took a little bit away from Rugby League because what happened was that internationally Australia was winning everything, England were no longer a danger, we were beating New Zealand easily, France had fallen off the map as a Rugby League power, and so we cannibalised ourselves. We turned on ourselves, and that's where we got our competition from, State of Origin.

Mick O'Regan: Right, now just go back to Beetson, Arthur Beetson and Mick Cronin, because as you said, that they both played for the Parramatta Eels in the club competition in Sydney, but just tell listeners who might not be familiar with that story, what happened when they turned out on different sides in the State of Origin?

Alan Whiticker: The mythology of it was that Beetson decked Cronin in a tackle and actually punched his team-mate. Now that didn't happen, and that's been proven and Arthur's written about this in his autobiography. But what did happen was that I think the first half was a little bit of sussing out each team, not much was happening, not much had ignited. Obviously a lot of the aggression was happening in the crowd, but shortly after half-time, Cronin took the ball up and Beetson hit him in a really high tackle, and really sat him on his backside, and I think that was the spark that ignited the other players as if to say 'Hey, we can take on these guys, not only can we take them on, we can belt them, and we can beat them.' It was almost like the other players were waiting for Beetson to do something to show that it was OK to bash your team-mates, and when he did that, the game just ignited and the crowd ignited and I think for the next six or seven State of Origin matches there was always a blue in the first five minutes.

Mick O'Regan: Sure was. Historian Alan Whiticker.

For all the details on the NRL celebrations, which include events in the cities and in many regional and remote centres, head to the webpage, centenaryofrugbyleague.com.au and we'll put a link on our webpage as well.

And don't forget that ABC Radio National's Background Briefing program on Sunday morning, April 20th, when Stan Correy will turn his attention to the history of the game.

Thanks to the team of producer Andrew Davies, technical producer Jim Ussher and to Sabrina Lipovic in Archives.

Guests

Neil Cadigan
Media Co-ordinator for the NRL Centenary Celebrations.

Alan Whiticker
Historian and the author of '100 Years of Rugby League'

Presenter

Mick O'Regan

Producer

Andrew Davies