Reflections on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the birth of the late Frank Hyde – great rugby league player, peerless broadcaster…and a towering figure in the game’s story-book.
February 7, 2016
 
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As a young sports journo in the1960s I was initially in some awe of Frank Hyde, such a commanding figure in the game – and already by then by then so well established as the strong, re-assuring (unique!)  voice of  many rugby league winters –  and a man of authority with a league pedigree reaching far back into distant mists. But, progressively, I came to know him as so much more….as a warm bloke,  of good humour and humanity and many diverse interests ……..as well as a true pillar of the League story…. of the game’s s past and present…. and its possibilities.
That awareness grew in the 70s  and ‘80s when we were both involved with Rugby League Week magazine  on which Frank was a straight-up-the guts weekly columnist who said exactly what he thought,  being quite prepared in his writing to flail away at the game’s administration and its occasional mugs and shortcomings  and  such things as dumb rule changes whenever he thought it necessary. Which was fairly often.  Football coaches were a particular target for a time as they grew in status and ego and  delivered to an awed media their weekly pearls of wisdom   - with the gravity of the Sermon on the Mount (those are Frank’s words)
 I came to much enjoy his company and conversation which in their breadth embraced such a swathe of territory….…encompassing  for me in my personal  assessment of Frank Hyde such words as these: ……..genial, plain-spoken, robust, expert, fair dinkum, blunt, strong, honest, edgy  compassionate, funny, loyal……………..and many more.
Later, in having the pleasure ….and significant privilege  too …….of working with Frank on his 1995 autobiography (Straight Between the Posts), I  came day by day  to know the full, remarkable story of a man who stands rightly  on a day such as this as one of the finest of the Rugby league century – although whether today’s game with its unblinking `now focus’  and uncertain leadership remembers him well enough, I doubt
I relish the recall of  those afternoons with he and the unforgettable Gaby, Frank’s wife, in the family home  at Queenscliff back in 1995 in the making of the book–   with each of those occasions ending with a glass (or two) of the  excellent home brewed beer  of which Frank was so proud – with  the bottles extracted  lovingly from a cupboard under a sign which read de bibis nil nisi berum  - Drink nothing but the best
The only slightly worrying coda to the ending of the day’s work at that time was the thought of safely negotiating the steep drive which led down  to the street from Chez Hyde. Stories abounded of tumbles taken, some by famous league men after visits. When the great sports photographer Ernie McQuillan, who was responsible for  the striking cover  study done for Frank’s  book,  went back on several occasions to re-shoot the pic  there was a growing suspicion that Frank’s excellent home brew was  a significant attraction.
There will be many yarns told of him on this anniversary and because of that certainty mine will be only a brief `time out’ in play. I’ll provide a headline with each of these snippets that follow ; Frank would approve of that: he liked good order and accuracy in his words.
Number 1: OH, Danny Boy!!!!!!!   
 In Lyons France, on the day of the 1972 World Cup Final, my wife Joy and I , newlyweds on our honeymoon, took up Frank’s kind invitation to catch a free ride on one of his supporters tour buses to the ground. The evening before had been particularly heavy, spent  in the colourful  journalistic company of the likes of Bill `Tex’Mordey, Geoff ‘Pinky’ Prenter and Jeff `The Pigeon’ Collerson . Hangovers  and hazy memories of fine French red wine ,  were the order of the following morning.
 In what we thought may have been a shrewd tactical move  out the front of the hotel, Joy and I clambered aboard the second Hyde tour bus,  guided aboard by the man himself ….and armed with earlier insiders knowledge that Frank  on Bus No 1, would inevitably sing en route to the ground. Craving silence in our fragile condition, we were to be kayoed by a combination of the Hyde tour game plan - and technology. Frank headed off to the No 1 bus, but the moment that our vehicle followed , a long-playing Frank Hyde favourites tape was slipped into the  cassette player….. and set for the entire journey at decibels capable of raising the dead.
 The trip to the ground was painfully slow (literally) – and Frank’s gravelly, albeit tuneful voice boomed out for every metre of the way. Oh!!!!!  Danny Boy!!!!
Number 2 A Man of his Word:
 On  the occasion of the selection of the first four Immortals in 1981 Frank, Harry Bath and  Tom Goodman  (as eminent a rugby league panel as surely has ever been assembled in the game) debated long into the night at  Sydney’s Wentworth Hotel. The painstaking reduction from an initial list of 100 chosen to the last five….then down to the required four was not arrived at until around 4 o’clock in the morning.  Inevitably, a great player had missed the cut – and Frank, chairman of the panel, swore for ever after that  he would never release the name. That he never did was a mark of the man………………..although it trickled out years later as these things do that Graeme Langlands had been the one to miss the cut…and Bob Fulton had got the nod.
Number 3 The cruellest cut of all.  
Frank Hyde was a leader of men, as his record and reputation demonstrated.  It was not until the late 1940s, in conversation with the forthright man who became President of the Australian and NSW Rugby Leagues, Bill Buckley, that he learned he had been pencilled in to the biggest job the sport had to offer -  as the likely captain of the 1941 Kangaroos……... There never was a Roo tour of ’41 of course ….thanks to the War, and in what was one of the toughest calls of his fine career Frank never did get to wear the green and gold jersey.
Number 4   Give us a Song Frank!
In the early 1980s,  Rugby League Week, of which I was then editor, shamelessly nicked an idea off the Aussie Rules mob and staged the game’s  first Rugby League Grand Final Breakfast . It proved a rousing success, and drew a big crowd to the Wentworth. Star of the event was the Immortal John `Chook’ Raper dressed in pyjamas, dressing gown and spats – and flourishing a magnum of champagne from which, as he descended the stairs, he took an occasional swig.
Unbeknown to many  that morning there had been a significant luncheon held a few days before, featuring Frank Hyde who was to be a star attraction at the Breakfast  -   and  the imposing, talented and witty cabaret star Sue Cruikshank who was also booked to  do a spot there in her hilarious persona of  `Tiger’ (as in Balmain) Lil’. Various  of us waifs and strays from RLW attended the pre- event lunch in the particularly seedy downstairs bar of  a close-to-the-office inner city pub, in which the first impression on any arrival was of your shoes sticking to the carpet – which they were….. owing to the gallons of beer and other fluids which had been spilt on it over  aeons. The colourful  Pub manager, a rugby league fan who we knew as `Captain Morgan’ would highlight any RLW luncheon there by appearing in due course with free bottles of port, which he did, destructively….and on this day. Late in that afternoon came the stand-out highlight -  an impromptu concert delivered by Frank and Tiger Lil. Together, side by side they sang a bracket of songs. It was wonderful. A League Week staff attendee who left late afternoon to attend water polo training, was found hours later asleep on a bench just outside the pub. It had been that sort of lunch.  For his part Frank, obviously found his way back to Queenscliff and safely negotiated the steep climb to the house -  for he was there  full of life a few days later at the Breakfast – which was subsequently deemed a ground-breaking  smash hit and ran for 20 years or so in the period that followed..
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Frank Hyde’s story is full of spirited tales of friendships and footy and travel – with great enjoyment and sense of fun  the fellow travellers along the way. 
In the telling of his life and times -   with its first memories from back in around 1919 - pages 126-134 are my special favourites in the book that became a reality in 1995  - at a time when the building  Super League storm crackled in the background .
In fact, those few slim pages of a chapter called `The Importance of Being Tiger’  rank very high in my own mind  among anything else that exists in the 40 or so books I have worked on since about 1988. They tell of the beautiful knockabout friendship  between 2SM’s  Frank and his 2KY broadcasting rival  and pal  E. (for Ernest) ‘Tiger Black’.
 For anyone who cares about rugby league…..the way it was …..the way  perhaps it can be …….I commend them to you. It was a chapter that effectively wrote itself as Frank reeled off tales of his little mate Tiger. The stories shine with the  enjoyment of life …and of  the game…and true mateship…………..and of the thrill too of the grand, long tours that used to be the way of the Kangaroo experience  They are a wonderful snapshot of  human friendship and the shared experience.
There could surely be no greater irony that the year in question when Frank sat down to tell his story  was 1995 – with the game edging daily into the midst of the  commerce- and- greed- driven war for rugby league’s future that would almost tear it apart.  We can only wonder what he would have made of today when the much loved sport that provided the back drop to his life has gone from being just a game……..to a game-slash-business………and on to today’s manifestation of  a business-slash game. I suspect that very likely he would have grumbled away ……..but loved it still.
Today, the great Frank Hyde OAM  is remembered  - a man with a dual love of family and  a game called rugby league.  He touched so many lives along the way……  would have loved the friendship and harmony of  this day with its happy memories..
And you could back it in …..that somewhere along the way,  at some time, he would have sung Danny Boy.
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Tiger Black
Timely today
Irony of ‘95

In the shadow of his 80th birthday, the old warrior has a crook back which gives him hell and plays havoc with his golf swing. But as has been his way through life Noel Raymond Kelly, aka Ned , heads resolutely on,  still golfing regularly  down at his much loved Long Reef,  still full of the good-hearted gruff humour and the generous spirit that  has been the trademark of  one of the very special lives of the rugby league century. Ned remains a treasure of the game - and a nod of appreciation in his direction+ from those charged with running  it  these days would seem entirely  fitting on the milestone occasion of January 22 when the 80 years clock clicks over.

The fact is that  a profile of the rugby league story in the wider sense – one that is  a saga of courage, dedication, achievement  and an unflagging work ethic accompanied by continuing care for the game – dwells within the stocky frame of Noel Kelly.  For any youngster enamoured of league, a trip to the local library to borrow Ned’s 1996 book  Hard Man will reveal inspiration galore  in the story of his unlikely  climb to the very  pinnacle of the game from the base of a tough, no favours, impecunious country upbringing. His arrival from Queensland in Sydney in 1961 with his wife Chris and a new baby, came shakily, via a rusty old ute in which the only air-conditioning was courtesy of the holes in the floor. Never was the going easy; all that was achieved in the years that followed came through hard yakka. In his early days  on arrival in Sydney to join Wests, Ned worked three jobs.

In trying to sum him up years ago, I wrote: “around football he constructed a life built on simple things – love, hard work, fair treatment of his fellow human beings, friendship, good humour.” That formula, encasing his talent as a footballer, produced a glittering career at the highest level which included 25 Tests and a place in rugby league’s Team of the Century.  When the Great Unpredictability of football provided a low key ending  for him as a player in Wollongong in 1970. Ned linked up with that most friendly and welcoming of clubs North Sydney – and as a coach put some real steel into the Bears in five eventful seasons. From there came the final leg, which continues to an extent to today – of his unofficial role as an ambassador for the game – the fact being that Ned, being a gregarious bloke of generous spirit was happy to grace the podium at functions beyond counting, telling his stories, reminding people what a great thing it is to be involved in a game such as rugby league.  He doesn’t do quite as much of it now – but keeps his hand in, remaining as Patron of the Northern Suburbs Men of League chapter. Ned chides himself for overdoing the footy trips: “I was carrying on like a 21 year old, going away for all those weekends. I woke up that Chris was sitting at home on her own all these years. I scaled back ….…there were a few reasons.

If the story of Noel Kelly, footballer is here and there overly robust (he was sent off 17 times in his senior career), well, that’s just the way football was back then – i.e. dog eat dog and every scrum a mini-war. Ned started his football as a lock forward but was destined to spend his entire senior playing days in the front row, at hooker or prop. Today’s perpetually sore neck which plays tag with his aching back reminds him constantly of that. But the wider picture of his football days and hard working life beams out an uplifting message for any young reader: All is possible.

On an early summer’s morningI spent a couple of hours with Ned at his Collaroy Plateau Home, essentially just `talkin’ football. These are just a few of his scattered observations

• The 2015 grand final:  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a better one. JT wrote the script.”
• Jonathon Thurston:  “I have never seen anyone better than him. He is a great 80 minutes player – and he gets whacked, week after week."
• Greg Inglis: "Greg is a lovely bloke but he either doesn’t know how good he is or he doesn’t know what a day’s work is. He can come out and destroy a team if he wants to. But I wouldn’t have him as skipper.  He wasn’t ready for that but I hope he gets another chance sometime."
• Sam Burgess: "He’s a cracker. If I was at Souths I’d make him captain. His two brothers will play better when he’s there."
• "More athletes than footballers play the game today. You see big blokes who are being paid top money who can’t even play the ball."
• Cameron Smith: “A great player….the best dummy half in town….but he’s a `centre-forward’ not a hooker and I honestly think he’d have more trouble fitting into my position than I would into his. When scrums were fair dinkum every one of them was a struggle; you’d push your guts out, you’d be getting smacked in the mouth and blokes would be tramping all over you. It was a tough deal; you’d walk out of some scrums buggered."

No doubt remains in any chat with Ned that if he happened to be pulling the strings at League Central there’d be some tinkering around the game.
“I’d bring back the scrum, he says, “and make it work. Rugby union manage that and League could too. The scrum would bring back a contest for the ball…something that has virtually gone from the game.”  A single referee would do him and  Ned believes the game should also make better use of the Sin Bin …..and wonders aloud why the Kangaroos’ war cry (which featured before games on his three tours) was ever dropped. “The crowds loved  it,” he said. “It was great entertainment…great theatre.”  Ned urges more support too for country football, lifeblood of the game’s long years. “It’s going backwards out there,” he says.

We stray into a subject of some sadness, talking of great players who have left the arena, and the numbers of others struggling with health problems. The tone brightens with recall of their qualities as  Ned ruminates on champions of his experience  …of  the likes of Reg Gasnier (`the best centre), of Johnny Raper and Graeme Langlands (10 out of 10)…….He muses further over the great warrior Chang……”he wore a chip on his shoulder…………but there was no better player,” he says.. You could have played him anywhere ….even hooker!”
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 At the milestone of his 80th birthday, Ned remains a fan, notwithstanding his concerns over some aspects of the modern game. “I’ve always been loyal to the Wests Magpies – and always will be, “he says.  He still goes to games from time to time during each season, admitting however, “but geeze I can get comfortable in the chair in front of the TV sometimes…especially if the weather is a bit crook!”
The worrisome  back brings a wince to the Kelly dial  as a he climbs from his seat on my departure, but the handshake at the door from the meaty Kelly fist is as firm as ever – and so too the steady gaze…… yet with the familiar sense that a twinkle is never far away…..

The tormented late days in the life of journalist and broadcaster Mike Gibson provided a tragic coda to the story of a greatly talented man who lit up all areas of the media into which he strayed.  Mike, a lifetime believer in the North Sydney Bears, was found dead at his home on September 23, 2015. He was 75. The many tributes that followed were heartfelt, telling of his eclectic passage through the varied halls of print, radio and television journalism.   But there was a gap in the remembrances too - and it concerned Mike Gibson and rugby league. The tributes offered a gentle  nod to Mike the league writer, but the over-riding focus was on his successful later years when he blossomed into a knockabout star of commercial radio and TV.
 It is entirely appropriate that this MOL journal should balance the ledger in the story. My overall view of him is that he was THE great all-rounder of the modern Australian media  – and that  in the comparatively brief period he was a full-time league correspondent, he  became something of a pioneer in the game with his crisp and colourful writing  - plus developing into a breezy and expert commentator on radio and TV
Mike Gibson joined  the Daily & Sunday Telegraphs in the late ‘50s, and, gravitating towards the Sports Department,  became the Tele’s greyhound writer. In 1963, he took the first firm step that began his restless progress through the working years,  when  he paid his way to England  and covered for the Tele a triumphant Kangaroo tour - one that featured what is now recognised as the finest of all `Roo teams. Four years later he would be along for the ride on the sensational Bowler Hat tour of ’1967. So it was that he covered the full stories of arguably the two most colourful Kangaroo tours in rugby league history.
Gibbo was the Daily and Sunday Telegraph’s chief rugby league writer between 1965-mid ’69, succeeding George Crawford,  a devoted hand from the old school whose writing was strictly wedded to formal  Tele style – i.e.  simple active voice…. and plain. I chanced to be Mike’s offsider through most of that period, benefitting substantially from the ongoing Gibson Masterclass. In ’73, when he joined the Roo tour for a few weeks we were room-mates at the historic George Hotel in Huddersfield, the place where rugby league was born  in 1895.
Mike became a change agent in coverage of the game with his turn of phrase and colourful words - underpinned by a particularly lively imagination. His brief years at the Tele produced some of the most stylish writing rugby league had or has ever experienced.
A genial character with a puckish sense of humour, he wrote sport with affection and freshness.
He left behind many gems – and a  brief scatter of his words follow here. Typical was a famous  column he penned  in the ‘70s concerning the state of the  injured knee of UK and Manly ace Malcolm Reilly which had dominated the league news of  the time.  Gibbo went right to the heart of the matter – and interviewed the knee itself ….which spoke in a thick Yorkshire accent.
Norm Tasker, who worked alongside Mike in the Tele sports-room for several years, recalls:  “The tour story he wrote about the dart board at the Kangaroos pub being so worn out as to not hold the darts anymore, reflecting the boredom the tourists faced in the north of England, announced him as a writer of consummate skill.”
 Mike could write hard when the occasion called for it:
“The Australians handed France the Ashes on a platter….they treated the French team as a bit of a joke and the French tour as a lark” (on the Ashes winning and misbehaving Kangaroos of 1967, dropping the ball and losing the series on the French leg)
“ New Zealand is a second rate rugby league country. We are obliging by sending a second rate team” - slamming the Australian selectors in 1969
Almost always he wrote colourfully :
“He was akin to `Captain Marvel, Superman, Brick Bradford and Batman and Robin all rolled into one” – on the flying Norths winger Ken Irvine.
In 1966, when Mighty St George stumbled at last, and lost a semi-final he called them presciently: “a legend on `lollypop’ legs. Saints 11 year reign ended the following week.
When Easts beat Parra 15-14 in final round of 1967 …Mike tagged them  rugby league’s ‘Cinderella team’……the team that could not win a game last year, the team that became a bar room joke’.
There is much of it in the archives…………although…not enough
There exists a personal favourite…….reflective of both the Gibson humour  and style: a telegram sent to my wife (Joy, known to friends as `Scott’) and me on the arrival of twins in 1975, when only one child was anticipated.
Mike’s  words read simply: Great Scott! Two Heads are better than one.
I savour too the memory of a speech he gave at a Sportswriters dinner around 1980 in which he praised the quality of the  brigade of sporting scribes, despite the sniffy view of them held by some in loftier sections of newspapers. Mike reckoned the sports blokes had the last laugh, with his affectionate view of them (an all-male domain  back then) being of: “just a bunch of blokes having fun up the back of the paper.”
For  sure Mike Gibson himself had plenty of fun along the way …….and all of us  saddened by his death last Septembert on the cusp of yet another grand final not featuring his beloved Bears,  could at least take some solace from that.
Mike was close to  the great coach Jack Gibson who he interviewed humorously and brilliantly for tapes that dwell within the wonderful library of film-maker Graham McNeice. The Big Bloke could be an awkward interview subject, but he relaxed in the company of the “other Gibbo”.    I suspect that Jack’s final words on the Mike and his contribution would have been simply this:
“Kid – you played strong, done fine”. 

Richie Benaud and Ian Heads, pictured at the unveiling of the sculpture of rugby league legend Herbert Henry `Dally’ Messenger outside Allianz Stadium. Saturday March 29, 2008.
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It was a long and turning road that led me to joining a respected sports writing colleague and friend  Norm Tasker in our creation of the book Richie: The Man Behind the Legend,  celebrating the life and times of the great cricketer-commentator Richie Benaud.  
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The book’s introduction begins with these words: “The extraordinary reaction to Richie Benaud’s death in April, 2015, was born of an international respect that is the preserve of a very select group of people. Even the millions who did not know him felt somehow that they did, such was his command of the television medium. He was the ultimate communicator. To those who did know him personally — as a sportsman, as a television commentator and more importantly as a man —Richie’s passing meant so much more”...............
 
I suspect I was  in the company of many young blokes of my generation when  I bowled leg-spin (or attempted to)  in the cricket I played  -  specifically because of  Richie Benaud.  I was a big fan of his in the early ‘50s, a regular attendee at the Sydney Cricket Ground for Sheffield Shield matches and occasionally at Tests if there happened to be enough money in the household to stretch that far. My mate from across the street, George Cragen and I would catch the bus to Paddington, and trek down the race from Moore Park Rd to the ground, to savour many accumulating summer days there. Our accompanying baggage would be autograph books, a  couple of sandwiches in a brown paper bag - and a bat and a tennis ball which would be swung into action whenever there was a break, for a hit on the path which ran along the front of the Randwick-end Hill. During play, the autograph books were dug out on the occasions any fieldsman was despatched into the very deep `deep’ i.e. against the fence. It was there on such days, along with bunches of other post-WW2 kids,  George and I learnt the game and came to know of  the giants (to us) who played it; the likes of Sid Carroll, Syd Barnes,  Ray Flockton, Keith Miller, Jim de Courcy, Warren Saunders, Brian Booth,  Richie Benaud, Alan Davidson, Arthur Morris, Ray Lindwall, Bob Simpson,  Jim Burke, Ian Craig. Even sixty years on a magic surrounds  such names , as strong now for an old journo as it was then.  Such players were gods to us, and their gathered signatures  endured for years as Aladdin’s Cave bounty in autograph books sadly  long since gone.

The dashing Benaud, modelled in turn on the debonair devil-may-care Miller, was a special favourite. But with him, and his young companion in spin, Bob Simpson, it was more than that. Watching them, I had a real sense as early as the mid ’50 of the dark, sweet allure of the art of leg spin bowling, with its many mysteries. After the fire and fury of the quicks the artists of spin would quietly enter the fray, seemingly innocuous, but armed with legerdemain that on some days masked the sting of a hornet.

Avidly absorbing  this new and magical sporting theatre and  having read as much as I could find in coaching books and magazines such as Sporting Life and Sports Novel  I  came by and by to the  playing of  real cricket  myself – as a short-sighted,  bespectacled member of  the first ever team fielded by Vaucluse Public School. There, I became the resident spinner, doing my best to bowl out of the back of the hand. The genesis of that team came about in 1954 through the efforts of a man who would many years later provide me with a further, close link to the Great Benaud.  Phil Tresidder,  whose beginning in sports writing remains surely the dream introduction of them all in a working life, was the change-agent in question. `Tres’, as he was always known had gone to England as a journalistic teenage hopeful in 1947 and had, in succession, played a role in the coverage for the Daily Telegraph of:  the 1947 Wallaby tour, the London Olympics of 1948, the legendary campaign of Don Bradman’s cricket `Invincibles’ of that year and the tour of the 1948 Kangaroos rugby league side featuring the young Clive Churchill.  The deputy head master at Vaucluse Public, Mr Plunkett, chanced to be a family friend of the Tresidder’s – and it was Phil who convinced him that a cricket team would be a good thing for the school.

In toto, my own truncated but enjoyable cricket `career’ lasted from 1954-61 before being snuffed out by the reality of a working  life. During that time my bowling efforts, with Vaucluse Public, Sydney Boys High and briefly the Green Shield  teams of with Waverley and North Sydney, were doggedly  (if not overly successfully!) of the leg-spin variety. Then, with a working life underway, came an unlikely opportunity to learn the craft of journalism , seguing into sports writing with the Telegraph. My weekends were gone – and largely, so were my cricketing days.

By then Richie Benaud  himself  was a journo – and deadly serious about it - a police roundsman with the Sydney Sun, learning the second of what would be his three `trades’ in life (cricket, journalism, sports commentary). Our paths crossed occasionally in the following years -  although, being rostered to sports distant from cricket (rugby league and swimming mainly) there was not much more than occasional passing contact. That changed  in later years, thanks again to Phil Tresidder who lived just up the road from Richie and his wife Daphne at Coogee –  three or four beaches along from Bronte-Waverley where my wife Joy and I had a place.  There began occasional enjoyable catch-ups over dinner with Phil and Richie and Daphne at which the conversation would roam over many subjects – albeit with cricket always hovering somewhere nearby. I recall one especially memorable night  -  when we met for pre-dinner drinks  at Chez Benaud with its commanding view of  Wedding Cake Island and the Ocean beyond. Eventually, Tres, Joy and I headed out  for dinner with a special Benaud guest, the great West Indies (and Randwick!) speedster Wes Hall, who was catching up with old friends in Sydney.  There followed a memorable dinner at a local favoured Italian restaurant.

Getting to know Richie more closely after early hero-worshipping days followed by working years of only distant contact, brought not even a faint hint of disappointment with it. The man was all I could have expected – so quietly impressive -  and blessed with  what seemed to be a mind in which cricketing and other stories were filed as if books in a library. His knowledge of cricket and its nuances was monumental. But Richie set his personal  field placement far wider; in essence he was a polymath, possessing a curiosity and interest in many different things. Within him dwelt an obvious kindness, a calmness,  a sense of care for people.  And lurking just beneath the surface at all times was a lively, if dry, sense of humour…………………………………..

Fast forward to autumn 2015. It’s April 11 and the nation mourns at news of the death of the Great Benaud (still B’Nord to many of his old mates) at 84. A State Funeral offered by the Federal Government is courteously and quickly declined by Daphne  and the family. To his friends this is in no way a surprise. They understand well  that  Richie, a quiet man, perhaps even shy, would not have wanted all the fuss.

The media coverage on those early days of sadness lit up with many fine and genuine tributes. Fran Benaud (Richie's daughter-in-law) and Cathy Gauld (PA) assisted Daphne to organise (in three frantic days) a private farewell for him, held on April 15 in the presence of an invited crowd of 300+ at his home golf course - a place so much a part of his life - The Australian, at Kensington, Sydney.

The seeds of the book  Richie:  The Man Behind the Legend, featuring Brendan Read’s  stunning cover photo of Richie at the ground he loved, the Sydney Cricket Ground,  were sewn that afternoon in the many stories told during the official  ceremony and in private conversations that stretched  well into the afternoon.  That day there began a process which would ultimately expand across the globe – reaping an extraordinarily rich and varied harvest. 

Almost simultaneously in that  first week  of mourning, a separate conversation took place between  the two former Sydney Sun workmates  and friends, Richie’s brother John and Norm Tasker,  in which the possibility of a book telling Richie’s story and stories was raised. In due course Norm and tabled the idea with respected Sydney sports historian and publisher Geoff Armstrong , to an enthusiastic response despite the tightness of deadlines.  Later,  I took to Daphne Benaud  this growing thought  of a book that would in some ways  be about the `Unknown Richie’  - addressing the great diversity of his life, in cricket and way beyond. It became a consideration and discussion point – and then a positive reality – with the strong and committed support of the family……..

The work began in early June, 2015, and inviting the contributions that would eventually fill almost 400 pages of tales of Richie, the editors/compilers, Norm and I, pursued our quest to encompass the full breadth of Richie’s life via those who had known him – all the way from primary school mates back in the late 1930s. Through the scholarship of the book’s editor and publisher – cricket historian and author Geoff Armstrong – came wonderful photos to enhance and complement the text, and countless long-forgotten facts, dusted off  from the archives  to add to the mix. And so, in a short, intense period a book was born and produced….

By the end of the gathering period we had compiled a `team’ of  88 people across the world who,  with love  and readiness,  had offered their personal  memories and stories of Richie.  Channel 9 generously offered  more tales via their heartfelt work in a major tribute program which featured  observations and memories  of Richie -   the unchallenged `captain’ of the Nine commentary team for many years

Many of the stories in Richie are from cricketers who played with or against him through some famous encounters. Some are from people who knew him as a child, and grew up with him. There are those from journalists and broadcaster who worked with him, in press boxes and commentary boxes around the world. There are tales of summer days in the south of France, of the travails of maintaining his fabled Sunbeam Alpine motor car over half a century, and tales of innumerable acts of kindness, many underpinned by the strand of humour that was such a part of the Benaud persona……
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Together, the many scores of `tales of Richie’ gathered  illuminate the highways and byways of a unique life in sport, the media – and beyond.  RICHIE : THE MAN BEHIND THE LEGEND – is a book that does justice to the modest, much loved  figure who is at its heart  – and to his inspiring and uplifting  story of quiet, yet breathtaking achievement.
 
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            RICHIE:THE MAN BEHIND THE LEGEND
 A  very special book telling the full story of one of the greatest of Australian sporting lives.
 
                    Available wherever good books are sold
 
 
         To order the book online, below are recommended sites.
 
http://www.booktopia.com.au/richie-norman-tasker/prod9780987564191.html
http://www.angusrobertson.com.au/books/richie/p/9780987564191
https://www.dymocks.com.au/book/richie-the-man-behind-the-legend-by-norman-tasker-9780987564191/#.Vkpdj2feYdU
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   This season of fairy-tales ended for rugby league with Jarryd Hayne packing his bags and getting ready to climb aboard a cloud sign-posted `Hope' and head off for a new sporting life in the USA. The media was full of speculation on the entirely unexpected twist of such  a star pulling up stumps to fly away and joust with America's game. After all, the scribes and commentators were only just coming to terms with the fact of a couple more gods from league’s modern pantheon - Sam Burgess (Rabbitohs) and Sonny Bill Williams (Roosters) making their own exits-left,  bound for rugby union, and, very likely, the bright lights and razzmatazz of rugby's World Cup. Hayne, extraordinary talent that he is, can be rated the longshot of the three. He will indeed be a stranger in a strange world in America's vastly popular but idiosyncratic game, of which England's peerless wordsmith Geoffrey Moorhouse wrote in his seminal 1989 book on rugby league `At the George' :
 
      “This is a sport in which grotesquely overdressed and often grossly overweight men  run very short distances before thudding and blundering into each other en masse; whereupon the game stops dead, sometimes for minutes at a time”

  He continued the theme, calling American football:

“ A bastard game played by men wearing padded knickerbockers, broken up by time-outs and garnished with goose-pimpled cheer-leaders on the sidelines.”
  
The genial Geoffrey reserved his only positive words on gridiron for what he called the `preesentation' of the American game i.e. loud and flashy and high kickin'. You get the drift that he was not a HUGE fan. But whether he makes it or not in that arcane world Jarryd Hayne's out-of-the-blue decision landed as a great sporting story, another page in the peripatetic inclinations of the players of modern football codes. Genuine best wishes will accompany this unusual and high-talented football player on his adventure. In return and re-assuringly for the Parramatta Eels star, the security blanket of a continuing rugby league career and a big money contract will surely await him back home if things don't work out.

Hayne made his call on the coat-tail of season 2014's other fairy-tales. The Academy Award winner by a fair space in that department came via the South Sydney Rabbitohs finally killing off the longest premiership  drought in the club's history by winning the Grand Final. When the men (and boys) in the cardinal and myrtle finally disposed of the gritty, hard-scrapping Bulldogs in the late, championship minutes of the game, it seemed that a whole city rejoiced. There was - literally - dancing in the streets and the hoop-la continued for days. The Peoples' Team had won again after 43 years in the wilderness! In those heady days and nights that followed, all seemed right once more with a  working man's game which has become more of a business/game these days with rather too much emphasis on the `business' for many fans - and a perceived deficiency at high administrative levels in the old heart and soul qualities and the nous that had shaped the sport - albeit somewhat roughly at times -  into what it became……..

Sometimes it's the small things that illuminate big events best of all for we who look on - and so it was with the Rabbitohs. Out for dinner with my wife a few nights after the Grand Final, we encountered a bubbly young waitress in a near-city pub restaurant. A teenager, she had come from home to start work that night - and it happened that her home was not much more than a decent two-iron from Redfern Oval, Rabbitoh heartland. That evening, heading for work, she had made her way through scenes of wild joy in the streets around, as cars and trucks circled, music played (`Glory, Glory to South Sydney' unquestionably  Top of the Pops) and there was dancing and singing  and flag-waving and over-spilling happiness in the precincts of the district. Red and green was everywhere. The young waitress had had no previous contact with rugby league, but, oh boy, she had caught the bug now!! "I'm joining the club for next season!" she gushed. You could only wonder as to how many times that story was repeated now that the team called `The Pride of the League' had climbed back to the top. The game got lucky that night after a roller coaster season.…….

As an old sports journo of 50 years or so around the traps, I was chuffed to be a bit-player in the other reaffirming fairy-tale that was celebrated in rugby league in the late months of the season of 2014. The idea which had taken up lodgings long ago in a small pigeon-hole somewhere in a dusty corner of my head, had become a reality in 2014. Something observed and experienced 40 years before had become a book of 344 pages, ‘The Night the Music Died' – celebrated on this website.  It tells a seriously unlikely tale of how a team of knockabout bushies from the NSW west, probably 500/1 chances if the bookies had been calling the odds that year, had taken on all-comers in the first-ever, under-lights Amco Cup competition of 1974 and -  blow me down! - had won the bloody thing!

A book-maker of a different kind, was my running mate in the challenged tackled - Sydney's Geoff Armstrong, a man of encyclopaedic knowledge of sport complemented by a deep understanding of the arcane world of publishing, the former gathered from childhood, the latter honed to a sharp edge through a number of successful book projects skilfully negotiated. With initial interest in the idea of such a book no more than lukewarm from publishers, we decided to have a whack anyway – and, so, financed the project ourselves. "You won't get a thousand books into the marketplace," one `expert' told us. Well, we laced on our boots and headed into the unknown notwithstanding, having talked to a handful of good people in the industry and garnered some support. Also deeply re-assuring was the sense of history and heritage that continued to rumble beneath the surface of the game, although seemingly unknown and un-noticed at times. Anyhow, at last count as the Spring of 2014 edged towards summer close to 10,000 copies of `Music’ had gone into the market place, and the book, warmly received in its telling of a tale from 40 years before, was snubbing its nose at the doubters.

Along the way the process of the making of this book about ancient times became something very special in itself.  The story emerging, gradually taking shape via the 50 or so interviews so generously and honestly given, was genuinely remarkable – arguably THE great underdog story of Australian team sport.

The team of knockabouts, coached by an old St George champion, Johnny King and led by a hard-nosed policeman from Bathurst, Paul Dowling after all had performed near miracles along the track  that season – beating `gun’ Sydney premiership sides Canterbury, Manly (the premiers) and Penrith en route to the Cup, plus a team from Auckland which contained nine internationals, plus competing fiercely against growing odds in in one of the wildest matches ever played – against the touring Great Britain side.

o   .

For me, an author grateful for the chance of telling the tale, it proved to be the gift that kept on giving. Wonderful, emerging stories abounded among these hard men from the west,  the east-west span of their territory reaching 550 kilometres from Lithgow to Cobar. Wonderful too, the tales and secrets of the unlikely victories, personal opportunities taken, and some lost, triumphs carved out by men who could hardly ever train together because of the tyranny of distance – and in fact barely knew each other before they gathered in Sydney for their first game.

But the real joy came gradually and late in the project – in the growing realisation of the truly wonderful bond that existed within the (18)  living players. Forty years on, they were and are indeed a `band of brothers’ as the book suggests and to encounter them together  en masse as happened  a couple of times through the season was special indeed. In all my years in the business I can think of little to match those occasions in the understanding of what the shared experience in sport (and unlikely victory) can mean to men and women…..

Late in proceedings the  National Rugby League , to their ongoing credit, joined the fray in a positive way. After some foot-dragging early and a hint of fumbling along the way, the League hosted the warriors of Western Division on a splendid September day in the `Big Smoke’. The `boys’ and some wives and partners came to town and were feted in a special and at times emotional 40 years anniversary event at  the League’s excellent museum at `League Central” at Moore Park. At dusk the visitors from the west were whisked across to  the ritzy venue Carriageworks  for the NRL’s `One Community’ night – one of the finer occasions of the sporting year. 

The League’s nod to history and tradition and magic very likely flew in the face of some professional advice given to a game that is very slickly (overwhelmingly?)  `now- focussed’ these days. Solid rumour suggests that one of the highly paid `consulting firms’ brought in by the `New League’ under Dave Smith,  had decried the value of `history’ in their report, suggesting that little could be made for the game’s all-important  `bottom line’  from the realms of things past.

The consultants were of course wrong as other games that are played  have proved and continue to prove -  the likes of cricket, AFL and NFL. In all of them the nod to history is important -  deep and strong and fair dinkum  - entirely as it should be.

That the League eschewed such cold corporate advice and instead said howdy to the boys of ’74 and brought them to town and  marked the occasion of  an important anniversary of their Cinderella story of that long ago season was, ultimately, rather wonderful. The players were given awards that should have been theirs’ 40 years ago, remembered,  photographed, interviewed and welcomed with great warmth.

Standing tall alongside such events as the Great Rabbitoh Revival and Jarryd Hayne’s magic carpet ride to an unknown future this brief afterglow for the boys of Western Division in the game’s 107 th year was in its own way…. a fairy-tale too.

It was that kind of season.

Here are the links to two recent interviews on the ABC:
Conversation with Richard Fidler
Interview by Paul Kennedy

There will be signing sessions, with a chance to meet some of the 1974 Western Division team at:




`A Readers; Heaven Bookshop' 184 Mort Street Mudgee, Wednesday, September 3, 5pm-7pm

Big W Dubbo, Thursday, September 4, noon

Big W Bathurst, Saturday, September 6, noon

The book that tells the thrilling story of one of the outstanding underdog achievements of Australian sport is off and running. The Day the Music Died: How a bunch of bushies forged Rugby League's greatest fairytale is now available at Big W's and wherever good books are sold.