An obsession begins: St George v Canterbury Bankstown - the 1979 NSWRL grand final.

The Lead-up 

I was 8 years old during the 1979 football season, not turning 9 until October. This was the first season where I truly went hard core with my rugby league following. I was already keen before then, make no mistake, but in 1979 I became *obsessed*. Rugby league was beyond a doubt my favourite sport and was to remain in this exalted position until the Super League war hit, although the obsession had faded a little by then.

There were a number of reasons that rugby league was so strong for me that year. Firstly, having been near the bottom of the grade in Year 1 academically and still below average starting Year 2, by the start of Year 3 I had this reading thing licked and was now reading well above average for my age. A big part of the drive to read that I experienced was the absolute need I had to be able to read the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mirror, the Sun, The Sunday Telegraph, the Sun-Herald, Big League magazine and the Daddy of them all... Rugby League Week! These were brought home on a regular basis by my brothers David and Peter and I was rather impatient waiting around for my turn to read them. Of course I read them sports section first! I did make some complaints about not getting the Sydney Morning Herald to read as well but my brothers were not terribly enamoured of its mammoth broadsheet pages. They assured me that its sports coverage was 'shit' and thus largely assuaged me. Now that I was a good reader, I could read all the stories about rugby league as well as dive into some books of Rugby league history that someone had thoughtfully purchased for me! The love for learning facts all on my own that I honed on rugby league soon spread, and I have been a reading addict ever since.


Secondly, and possibly even more important, this was the year my brother David started taking my brother Geoffrey and I to the football on a regular basis. David, whose name is going to crop up on a regular basis through my adventures in watching sport, was all of 17 at the time, but he seemed so much *older*. He had a job, he was big, he had money (as my mother was a single parent, he was my primary source of spending money), he went out at nights. I looked up to him as it was, but this year I began to idolise him. We'd gone to games before 1979 I guess, but I recall none of them. I do remember David being upset when North Sydney ended our failed premiership defence in 1978, a long way out from the semi finals!

I also remember the first game of 1979! Kogarah Jubilee Oval, St George v defending premiers Manly Warringah, our new signings Brian Johnson, Graeme Wynn and Steve Morris all debuting for the club. A full house. I recall we were sitting on what became our traditional area on the hill opposite the grandstand, although many of our 1979 games were spent on the hill on the grandstand side. Being 17, David was a little influenced by the moronic element of St George supporters who congregated there. From 1980 onwards we were ensconced on the other side of the ground.

There was a great air of anticipation amongst the home crowd as we awaited our new team, under the watchful eyes of our coach, the Old Fox, Harry Bath, who was no doubt lighting up another cigarette as he contemplated the upcoming game. Would the defending premiers show us up early in the season? Or would the talk that this could be a premiership year be vindicated by a sterling display against the might of Manly, who had captured 4 premierships in the previous 7 seasons? Would it ever?!!

The defending premiers were swept away under a spectacular wave of ferocious red and white attack in a stunning 34-9 defeat! In a 3 point try era, this was quite the thrashing. Wynn, Johnson and Morris played major roles in sparking an attack that had seemed a little short of the mark in 1978. Combined with the strength up front of Captain Courageous Craig ' Fat Albert' Young and fellow International Rod 'Rocket' Reddy and the solidity of the experienced backs Tony Trudgett, Graham Quinn and Robert Finch, it was totally evident to this 8 year old that *no one* was going to stop the Mighty St George juggernaut on their path to this year's premiership, a fact which he proceeded to inform his somewhat less enthusiastic schoolmates of in no uncertain terms three or four hundred times that year.

Unfortunately for the know it all's classmates, he was in fact right on this occasion. St George did not lose a single game to a team that made the top 5 that year and the 5 losses they experienced seemed to be more due to a lack of focus and drive against lesser opponents than it was to being outplayed by a genuine rival.

So I entered the semi-finals with a high degree of confidence. Under the final 5 system, the minor premiers took a week off while the other 4 teams played. We met Parramatta, perennial bridesmaids of the era, in the major semi final. My trusty brother David took us to the SCG of course. This turned out to be a real dogfight. My major memory of the game is the tension as we were submitted to our toughest test of the season. Only some Steve Morris brilliance and stout defence enabled us to turn back the charging Eels, and by 15 points to 11 we advanced straight to the grand final.

Meanwhile, Canterbury Bankstown, perennial losers and September wannabes, who had been waiting a rather embarrassing  37 years since their last premiership with most of that time having been spent devoted to providing fodder for good teams like St George and Souths to pad their for and against records, were steadily waking up. After ending St George's immortal, unprecedented, unparalleled and unmatched 11 consecutive premiership winning year run in 1967, they'd made another grand final in 1974 and had followed up with some additional semi final appearances under the increasingly shrewd managerial guidance of Peter 'Bullfrog' Moore.

Coached by my future high school principal Ted Glossop and unhappy at the general belief that their appearance in the semi finals was simply to provide some entertainment for the fans before getting out of the way of the big teams, Canterbury Bankstown's time was coming.

 George Peponis, the Mortimer and Hughes families and a handful of other associated players including Peter Cassilles, whose mother was a beloved helper at my primary school,  proceeded to cut up Wests, Cronulla and Parramatta in some style, becoming the first team to make the grand final from 4th or 5th place since the final five was introduced whilst earning the moniker of 'The Entertainers for the adventurous nature of their play.

It turned out that we were to have more than our share of adventures getting to watch the grand final ourselves. Everything started fine. Sensing a premiership in the offing, David queued up for 2 nights in Phillip Street in order to guarantee that he would get good tickets for us. I was amazed by his sacrifice and effort at the time. After doing so myself later in life I realised a) it's not that hard to do nothing for a couple of days and b) it's even less hard should you be keeping yourself warm and entertained by copious consumption of various alcoholic beverages! Having somehow managed to keep his drinking money separate from his tickets money, David purchased the tickets, brought them home and we all awaited the outcome of the major semi-final. With that aforementioned piece of Slippery Morris magic, all was well and it was time to anticipate the game ahead!

Being a single parent with a fulltime job, a chronic illness and interests that stretched beyond the lives of her five children, my mother had no truck for the idea that her role in life was to be a handmaiden for her sons. We were all put to work around the house. One of my jobs, along with my recently turned 11 year old brother Geoffrey, was to put the paper goods into the incinerator and burn them. Burning things was one of the better jobs available around the house and we rarely suffered a shortage of enthusiasm for the task. We collected the piles of papers, old envelopes, cardboard boxes and dutifully burnt them and watched the smoke drift away into the atmosphere. We were good boys. We burnt everything, we didn't let the messy papers lie all over the house, unlike our lazy older brothers.

Some days later my brother David was fiddling around in the loungeroom.
"What are you looking for?" I asked helpfully.
"A white envelope with clear plastic on the front. Have you seen it?"
"No, sorry."
He looked around some more. He went in the kitchen. He looked on the benches. He went downstairs. I heard some noises. He came back upstairs. He looked in the loungeroom again.

"Shit!" said David
"What?"  I asked.
"They're fucking gone."
"What's fucking gone?" I replied.
The Went brothers were not big on social niceties.
"The fucking tickets." said David.
"What fucking tickets?" I answered.
"The fucking grand final tickets!"
I was shocked into silence. David, who'd had a little longer to process this impending nightmare, was jumping all too quickly to the proper conclusions.

"Have you seen the white envelope with the clear plastic on the front? It's important Lin!"
"No, I haven't seen it for days."

More shocked silence.

"OH FUUUUUCK!" yelled David. "You stupid fucks put them in the fucking incinerator!

Desperate dash to incinerator. Futile pulling on burnt boxes, hoping to see a flash of virgin white and the golden yellow of the tickets.
"Great work Lin. You've fucked us now. Well done." Sympathy in a crisis wasn't a big family trait.

Once the tears were dried I found myself horrified at the situation. Having told everyone at school that I would be going to the grand final, I now faced the prospect of having to tell them that I wasn't going! And I was going to miss us winning a premiership. Given it would be 31 years and the club as I knew it would be gone before we won another one, this may well have been an even bigger disaster than I envisaged at the time!

 David contacted the New South Wales Rugby League (NSWRL) in the hope that they might replace the tickets for us. I sense my mother's counsel here as her ability to wheedle things out of bureaucrats was most impressive. Be that as it may, a reply came to our tale of woe. It didn't replace the tickets but it did authorise us to attend so long as we produced the letter! We were going to the grand final! Thank you Kevin Humphreys!

September 22, 1979. St George v Canterbury Bankstown, Sydney Cricket Ground.

My first grand final! The letter was safely in David's possession as we made our way into the SCG via train and bus. We had to re-tell the story several times during the day as the attendants were not used to being shown a letter instead of tickets! Our seats were in the Sheridan Stand (subsequently replaced by the Churchill stand) but we were there early as St George's Under 23 team had also made the grand final to play Parramatta. It was a feature of the era that the performance of one's lower grades received a measure of attention. In this case, given that Parramatta swept both lower grade grand finals, a measure of attention is all they're going to get!

As befitted our status as raging hot favourites, we burst out of the gates and put Canterbury to the sword. The teams were even enough early but once St George got into gear, Canterbury had no answers. Sparkling tries to that wonderful attacker Brian Johnson, the solid winger Mitch Brennan and  the redoubtable Rod 'Rocket' Reddy followed, all converted by the ever trustworthy goal kicking boot of second rower George Grant. By halftime it was 17-2! 3 converted tries! We were home! David certainly thought so as he headed off to the bar underneath the Sheridan stand to celebrate, leaving Geoffrey and I to talk to a nice old lady who was sitting near us. In David's defence, it was a different world then and leaving an 11 year old and an 8 year old to watch by themselves wasn't seen as outrageous behaviour. Certainly Geoffrey and I weren't bothered!

To be honest, I found the 2nd half to be rather boring, I wasn't concerned that we'd lose but we weren't thrashing them as I had expected. Meanwhile Canterbury chipped away at our lead with 2 unconverted tries to get back to 17-8.

David's reappearance to watch the last rites was greeted by Canterbury's 3rd try. Steve Gearin did convert this one and with just a handful of minutes to go, it was 17-13 and this game was on the line! Several rather nervy minutes followed. Canterbury didn't create any chances but I was still worrying when suddenly David grabbed me and started screaming "We've won, we've won, we've won!" I hadn't heard the siren.

Canterbury fans got to hear plenty from me though, as David, Geoffrey and I joined a large group of jubilant St George fans in exchanging pleasantries from the Sheridan stand with the Canterbury fans leaving via the Hill below. The Bulldogs raucous claims about needing 5 more minutes were treated with contempt then and ever since. None of us could see then that the next quarter century was going to see quite the reversal in the fortunes of the 2 clubs. But that pain was for the future. My initiation into the world of sports barracking had just received its first maximum payout. And I would most certainly be back for more of these apples!

There's a short highlights video of the major semi final and the grand final  here

Plus a more detailed highlights package from the grand final here