I played Rugby for West Lindfield when I was seven years old. It’s one of my earliest childhood memories. I can still recall being excited by the physicality of the contest. I was to learn much later that it was ‘the game they play in heaven’.
A move to Wollongong at the age of nine introduced me to the ‘beautiful game’. My sixth class teacher played for the Socceroos before they were called the Socceroos. He was none too impressed when two mates and I defected from our Saturday soccer clubs to play ‘the greatest game of all’. He threatened to axe us from the school soccer team. It was an idle threat. He was short on numbers.
The year was 1963 and local lads like Changa Langlands were headlining in Sydney. My love affair with League grew stronger by the year. By fourteen my life revolved around League and my beloved Dragons. I took the train ride every Saturday up to Sydney. My trek up Foveaux St from Central to the SCG for the Match of the Day was like a religious pilgrimage. St George featured almost every week.
After a schoolboy match one afternoon I sighted the St George Reserve Grade Coach. I introduced myself and told him I rarely missed a match at the SCG or Kogarah Oval. He invited me into the dressing room for the half time break of the First Grade team at the next home game.
He met me at the gate and we followed the players into the dressing room. He allowed me to take pictures; Raper, Gasnier, Langlands, Rasmussen etc all up close and personal.
I heard the captain-coach, Ian Walsh, give his team the usual half time spray. Poppa Clay and George Evans, in the twilight of their careers, were still kitted up, having played reserve grade, and ready, if needed for first grade. They chatted with me into the second half of the game.
By age sixteen I had my Junior Referees Ticket and not long after the Junior Coaching Certificate. I lived and breathed and loved Rugby League.
A year later I converted to Christianity and transferred to Chatswood High where Rugby ruled. Priorities radically changed but I remained a true believer.
Fast forward to the 1980’s. My son is seven and he is playing League for the Balgownie Tigers. I’m as proud as punch. Or should that be, as satisfied as a shoulder charge? He follows the Wests Tigers to this day.
Here’s the thing. I played League and Union. I coached League and Union. I refereed League and Union. I was always taught, and I always taught, that a tackle was something that you did with your arms.
You tackled with your arms and you kept those arms below the opponent’s shoulders.
Men my age, with memories, weep with joy at the mention of the mighty cover defensive tackling of Johnny Raper and Ronny Coote and the sight of the sweeping last line of defence tackling of Les Johns.
We hear this nonsense today about League being a tough man’s game and the armless shoulder charge (sometimes accompanied by a leading forearm and elbow) being an integral part of League’s tough appeal. Were the likes of Sattler, Provan, Kelly, Ryan and Beetson any less tough? They tackled with their arms and were banished from the field immediately if those arms strayed too high.
Rugby League isn’t a hard game. It’s a soft game; soft on scrums, soft on slowing up the play the ball and soft by legitimising cowardly thuggery.
The more these supposedly ‘great men of league’ who write about and commentate on the game rabbit on about the legitimacy of the armless tackle, the more they are killing the game.
I reckon every time that sickening shoulder charge of Greg Inglis on Dean Young was repeated on television in recent weeks, another thousand parents said, ‘My child won’t play that game.’ It’s no secret that AFL and Soccer are winning the working class and aspirational belts of our major cities at the grass roots level of kid’s sport.
Peter FitzSimons comments on the Inglis incident in his SMH TFF column on Saturday 28th July:
Let’s cut to the chase. Dean Young could have been killed by that Greg Inglis shoulder charge, or had his spine broken or his jaw, or severe brain damage.
Who will stop this thugathon? I’m not the first, nor will I be the last, to join the dots between the insatiable appetite for ‘big hits’ on the field and ‘king hits’ off the field by alcohol fuelled mindless males.
The former NRL boss, David Gallop, a seemingly eminently sensible and decent man did so much to clean up the code. Perhaps he was shown the door because he wanted to clean up the on-field brutality with the same firmness that he cleaned up the off-field scandals? I speculate.
These supposedly great men who commentate, pontificate and legislate League and gabble on about each others’ greatness are puppets to gambling propaganda, navvies to neo-narcissism and acolytes to alcohol double-speak. As Maximus said to Commodus, “Time for honouring yourself will soon be at an end, highness.”
I was listening to the radio as I was driving last week to a talk back League show before Sunday afternoon’s game. In the introductory banter I heard one of these goons make two references to excessive alcohol consumption in a manner that commended and praised the practice. No wonder our society is reeling from alcohol fuelled violence. Talk about duplicity and double standards.
They really are in a league of their own.
They are shoulder-charging me into hating the game I love.
I have six grandsons; more than enough to form a basketball team, not enough for a Rugby scrum and just enough to form the farce that they call a Rugby League scrum.
But their fathers’ have too much common sense than to expose them to senseless but ‘legitimised’ acts of violence.
And if their grandfather has any say in the matter, they will play the game where the head is properly protected by on-field and off-field adjudication.
And where you tackle with your arms. It’s not rocket science. It’s just common sense.
