Monday Milestone: Chunky

This Week in History:
1920, June 19
Frank Burge scores a remarkable eight tries for Glebe in their rugby league match against University

It had never been done before.

The Milestone takes the Delorean back to the Roaring Twenties, when rugby league was different.

There were nine teams back then, with inner city clubs like Annandale, Glebe and University among them. There was a growing support for rugby league. There was a true inner-city Sydney competition. And there was Frank Burge.

Frank Burge had debuted for Glebe in 1911 aged just sixteen. An instant sensation, the man they’d called ‘Chunky’ due to his seemingly behemoth size of an estimated 93kg back then, was reported to be unlucky not to make the national side that year.  His would ultimately get his opportunity, becoming an international representative during the war, but arguably one of his greatest moments was yet to come.

By 1920 the Glebe forward was well recognised as a try scoring machine. Indeed by the end of his career some years later, he would amass 146 tries from his 158 first grade matches, more than double the tries of any other prop in the history of the game. In fact this mark of 146 tries scored by any forward was only recently broken by Steve Menzies. It had stood for eighty years.

But on a Saturday afternoon in June 1920, at the Royal Agricultural Society Showground, the site of the modern day Fox Studios in Moore Park, Sydney, Chunky would etch his name further into the record books.

Sadly no footage of the day is available, and pictures are scarce. The reports indicate Glebe would go on to thrash University 41-0, in what would be an otherwise unremarkable hiding aside from one curious, landmark fact:

Frank Burge, that day, scored eight tries.

Eight.

We will never know whether they were powerful line breaks, where Burge ran the length of the field. Or if they were scored from close range as the big forward dived over. All we have to go on, are that in all likelihood, given his reputation for remarkable support play, the most probable source of his tries were backing up for the final pass.

This by no means dilutes his efforts though. In the modern age, where a player is hailed as a star with a hat trick, and on the rare occasion someone crosses the stripe four times in a match, newspapers wax lyrically, it is almost unfathomable to imagine an eight-try hero. And to think Burge was a forward. Imagine having him in your fantasy team?

Chunky was unquestionably a remarkable talent, going on to a glittering international career. Upon retirement, he would go on to coach for the next twenty years.

Frank Burge passed away in 1958. He would be named on the bench in the Team of the Century, and today he still sits in the top ten try scorers of all time in rugby league history, a remarkable feat for a forward. But his high watermark of try-scoring was that day at the Royal Agricultural Society Showground.

It had never been done before. It has never been done since.

 

Milestone Five: Most tries by a player in an NRL match:

5. 6 – Jack Lindwall for St George against newcomers Manly-Warringah as the Dragons defeated the Eagles 61-11 at Hurstville Oval in 1947. He landed a lazy nine goals for a personal tally of 36 points that day too.

4. 6 – Alan Ridley scores six for Western Suburbs against Newtown as they defeated the Jets  38-9 at Pratten Park in 1936

3.  6 – Dave Brown scores six tries for Eastern Suburbs – twice. In a remarkable month, he scores a half dozen first against Canterbury, and then against Balmain, three weeks later in 1935. 

2. 7 – Rod O’Loan scores seven tries for Eastern Suburbs as they defeat University at the Sydney Sports Ground by 61-5 in 1935

1. 8 – Frank Burge scores eight tries for Glebe as they trounce University 41-0 at the Royal Agricultural Society Showground in 1920