To be a member of the red-and-white legion in the golden years was a special thing. As one such fan, this writer can report that we counted on our team to win every time they played, and rarely were we disappointed. While it is true we never enjoyed the elation experienced by followers of an underdog side that flukes a victory against expectations, not one of us would have swapped places with fans of another team. And if we were subjected to vitriolic abuse when we travelled to away games at Cumberland Oval or Belmore Oval or Pratten Park, because rival fans despised us for being the tallest of poppies, well, that was a price we gladly paid.



Only at Redfern Oval, where fans seemed psychotically anti-Saints, rougher, more threatening, nastier, did we occasionally question our calling. In 1964, (a year in which Saints would win their ninth of 11-straight premierships) this writer had his red-and-white beanie snatched from his 14-year-old head by a trio of urchins and hurled onto the top of a toilet block at Redfern. I recall, too, my face reddening and ears ringing in fury at the foul curses shouted by a coven of elderly red-and-green clad women in the grandstand at my idols Raper, Provan and Clay.

Ken Kearney says that in his day, turning up at Redfern Oval was always a disconcerting experience. “They hated me there,” chuckles the Saints hooker. “They’d be into me from the moment I arrived with my wife Maureen. They’d catcall me when I was standing around watching the lower grades, and when I ran onto the field they booed more loudly than any other crowd. And they were just the women. Those bloody Rabbitoh women.”

But Saints, and their supporters, usually had the last laugh. “Look at the scoreboard!” we’d heckle at the vanquished Souths fans, even though, it must be confessed, we wisely withheld our retorts until we could hurl them from the safety of our departing trains.

For home games at Kogarah, we were on much surer ground. One match in 1964, when we downed Newtown 33–9, remains vividly in my memory. It epitomises, for me, the cock-a-hoop, carnival atmosphere that suffused Jubilee Oval in the winning years. A day at Jubilee was very different from one at the Sydney Cricket Ground, Saints’ home away from home. You dressed up to go to the Cricket Ground, and were tense and nervous because, being the match of the day, the opposition would be strong and the chances of defeat greater.

At aptly named Jubilee Oval, our opponents were the lowlier teams and we looked forward to, and usually got, cricket scores against them. Accordingly, we dressed casually, in happy-go-lucky jeans, bright shirts and pullovers, or football guernseys, the Dragons’ or our school’s. On our heads would be the ubiquitous red-and-white beanie with the pompom on top. This day, against Newtown, a cool, clear July day, St George, and Gasnier in particular, took the Bluebags apart. There was no need for grinding forward play. The ball went to the backs from the opening blast of Col Pearce’s whistle.

In the past months, Saints had played regularly at the Cricket Ground, and I had watched them from on high in the Noble or Sheridan Stands, but this afternoon – from my seat just metres from the field – I was struck by the sounds of the contest. The grunts of collision, the expelling of huge whooshes of air when a man was tackled, the chatter of the players – “With you, Gaz” … “Hang onto it, Chook” … “Good tackle!”… “Get ’em onside, sir.” But above all, I was startled by the thundering, the pounding, of the galloping St George backs’ boots on the turf as they spread the ball, backed up and ran in try after try.

Gasnier, running gloriously, crossed for three of them. For one man in a striped shirt near me, the excitement — or, if he was a Newtown fan, the embarrassment — was all too much and he slumped from his seat. The attention of a St John Ambulance zambuck, sitting on his wooden box of medical supplies on the sideline, had to be attracted and he revived the fallen fan. The moment the full-time whistle blew, as was my and my mates’ Kogarah custom, we invaded the field, heading first to try to grab one of the four black-and-white striped cardboard corner posts, then, thwarted as usual by faster kids, we swamped our heroes, autograph books and biros extended.

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“May I have your autograph, Mr Provan … Mr Gasnier … Mr Clay,” we’d politely shout. Unlike some modern stars who ignore or abuse young fans, or, even worse, feign a hand injury to avoid giving autographs, I remember the Dragons of my youth remaining on the field until the last child’s book was signed.

Another bonus of following St George in those years was that we had the chance to see and meet rugby league’s finest around our district. In those days, because of residential qualification rules, players had to reside in the area they represented. They lived there, shopped there, relaxed there, worked there. So it was a regular treat to cross paths with John Raper in a local shop, Norm Provan at your school speech night or in his furniture store at Rockdale, Reg Gasnier playing golf at Beverley Park, Brian Clay at the traffic lights in his truck, or, if your stove broke down, Bill Wilson of St George Ranges might be despatched to repair it. If you attended Carlton South primary school, you would be taught by exciting Saints back Johnny Stathers.

The St George stars were part of their community. My fellow supporters all, like me, kept an autograph book and scrapbooks where our heroes’ signatures would appear not once but many times. And among us, local sightings of Saints men would be noted.

Ian Walsh became immediately aware of the responsibility he carried being a St George player: “We had to keep giving our very best. We knew we had the whole district behind us, counting on us, and that was very special. You could feel the support there and that was a wonderful feeling. I could sense it at the games, just walking around the district, in any pub in the area. The people were proud of us.”

Journalist Peter Muszkat, who covered St George in their premiership years, remembers the St George district – from Tempe down to Sutherland – as being a particularly proud one, and he ascribes this pride to the fact that the people were represented by a winning football team whose members were the fans’ neighbours. “People could touch them, speak to them. It’s different today, when players keep swapping clubs and the concept of district loyalty is a thing of the past. Also, back then there was tradition and stability in the club uniform. The white shorts and jumper with the big red V and the dragon crest was recognised everywhere. Now, thanks to greedy marketing men, clubs change jersey designs regularly so the kids have to keep buying the updated model.”

The St George district was a diverse one, with locales ranging from salubrious suburbs such as Blakehurst, Kyle Bay and Gymea to working-class Tempe, Allawah and Kogarah; the fans came from many walks of life. Among those who attended Saints’ fixtures at Kogarah, the SCG or other clubs’ suburban ovals were TV star Chuck Faulkner, Labor Senator Doug McClelland, future Liberal prime minister John Howard, and the shaven-headed neo-Nazi Ross ‘The Skull’ May. In 1964, Graham Richardson, who became one of Australian politics’ most powerful men, was a skinny, asthmatic Kogarah kid. “If you grew up in Kogarah in the 50s and 60s, you followed St George,” the man known as Richo remembers.

“If you wanted someone to look up to, to be inspired by, you never had to look past that team. If you were someone like me, a weed who couldn’t run out of sight without getting a wheeze and who was never going to achieve anything on a football field, supporting Saints was the stuff that dreams were made of. We had it all over kids from other districts, because we had the Saints.

“Bill McWilliam was the golf pro at Beverley Park Golf Club, down behind the leagues club, and every grand final day, at 5am, he’d load his ute with big St George signs and take half-a-dozen of us kids out to the Cricket Ground and we’d decorate the Noble Stand. After we’d finished hanging the banners, the groundsmen would come to throw us out, but we’d hide in the toilets, anywhere, until they’d gone, then take our place in the front row of the grandstand in time to watch all three grades.

“I learned plenty about life from St George. I learned how to win. They strained so hard to come out on top. Raper was the best example, but Langlands is another. They would put in an extra effort when they were completely buggered at the end of a game, when the other side were dropping. Saints had the heart to keep picking themselves up. They hated to lose. It was foreign and awful to them. You saw how angry they were on the rare occasions when they were beaten. Another thing I learned from them that I’ve tried to practise all my life is loyalty. Chook Raper told me how once in a game against Newtown he was flattened by a bigger opponent and Pop Clay came over and said, ‘Come on, get up! You can’t let these blokes see you hurt. Get up, and get up now!’ Chook genuinely couldn’t. He was next to unconscious, but Pop pulled him to his feet.

“As it happened, the bloke who got Chook had also been taunting Pop all game, calling him an old man because of his baldness. So Pop shook the cobwebs out of Chook’s head and they came up with a plan to get square. ‘Listen to me,’ Clay said. ‘What I want you to do is run up too fast on this bastard, leave a nice big gap that he won’t be able to resist running into, and when he does, I’ll be waiting for him.’ Chook left the gap, the bloke fell for the trick and Poppa cleaned him up something shocking, as only Poppa could do. As the fellow was carried off on a stretcher, Pop grinned at him and said, ‘Not bad for an old man, eh?’ Chook said he would have killed for Brian Clay after that. Quite literally, killed for him. Those men had a phenomenal ability to stick together.”

This is an edited extract from a new edition of Never Before, Never Again: The Story of St George’s 11-straight premierships, 1956-66 (Stoke Hill Press). First published in 1995, the new edition coincides with the 50th anniversary of St George’s 1966 premiership, the last of its 11 11-straight run of titles.