Punting Profiles: Darcy Lawler and the 1963 Grand Final
The rugby league season is on our doorstop, the hundredth time the dawn of winter has been celebrated by the opening round of the code in New South Wales and Queensland. For many, it will be but another winter of discontent, one that will end without trophy or glory. It will be filled with giant hits and glorious passes, slicing runs and magical tackles, wonderful kicks and grand tries. In the end, however, the majority of fans and players and staff will be disappointed.
Few will be more disappointed than those who taste the bitterness of defeat on Grand Final day. The old adage of so close yet so far rings very true in the ears of all those who fall at the final hurdle and the sharpness of the pain remains with most. Victory was in the air yet its taste was never known. Images of Wayne Pearce on haunches and Brad Fittler despondent live long in the memory for those who were there, a reminder of how disappointing that last loss can be.
In 1963, the Western Suburbs Magpies were the team to suffer most. The two standout teams that year were the Magpies and St.George, just as they had been the previous two. Wests had defeated the Saints three times that season and fancied themselves in the decider, believing the demons of two consecutive grand final defeats were about to be exorcised.
Unfortunately for those in black and white, Darcy Lawler was not of the same thinking. And it is he and not fate or destiny or St.George or the weather or the bounce of the ball that Wests fans to this day blame for that loss. While the enduring legacy of that game to most is the gladiatorial image of Arthur Summons and Noel Provan, muddied and embracing, to Wests fans it is the stench of match fixing and the heartfelt belief of being robbed that underlies that match and that season and that image.
Over one hundred years of rugby league, controversy has reigned supreme. There have been fights and court cases, division and off-field drama, salary cap scandals and the changing of rules. Yet few controversies have lived as long or been as bitter as the fallout from the 1963 Grand Final.
Rumours had been doing the rounds for years that number one referee Darcy Lawler quite liked a bet. Though Darcy Lawler was good enough to referee seven Grand Finals, he always walked under a cloud of suspicion. The Bill Harrigan of his era, Lawler had an innate ability to attract controversy. Many players were thrown off by his manner and most in the game suspected him of involvement with gambling, highly illegal at the time and highly unethical at any time.
Iconic St.George hooker Ian Walsh remarked, many years later in Ray Chesterton’s 100 Years of Rugby League: A Celebration of the Greatest Game of All, that “if it was going to be a good day for me he would call me by my Christian name [and] if he called me by my surname it was going to be a tough day at the office”. Wests hard man Noel Kelly, who to this day stands by the belief that Darcy Lawler fixed the 1963 Grand Final, also recalled in the same publication that Lawler had winked at him when giving final instructions before a 1961 semi-final against Balmain, a game that the Magpies won in controversial circumstances.
In the week leading up to what would become one of the most controversial Grand Final’s in rugby league history, rumours did the rounds that Lawler was on the take. Though sports-betting was illegal in Sydney at the time, the practice was as rife as SP bookmaking and dodgy two-up games and backroom casinos. And Lawler, by all reports, was right in the thick of it.
Jack Gibson, who would in later years become the super-coach and at the time was a rugged Magpies prop, was also well known in the seedy underbelly of Sydney life. He was well connected and walked with punters and bookies and all kinds of colourful identities. There had been a lot of money for St.George in the lead-up to the game, a real plunge of fearlessness, and Lawler, Gibson was told, was the man to ensure the bets were collected on. The referee stood, allegedly, to win ₤600 if the Saints won the big one.
Gibson passed this information onto a number of senior players as well as Wests secretary Bill Beaver. Beaver supposedly bought it to the attention of New South Wales Rugby League bosses but the allegations were either quickly dismissed or covered up. At any rate, nothing tangible was done and Lawler remained the man to control the decider.
Evidence from the match certainly lends itself to the notion that Lawler was on the Saints. Western Suburbs were murdered in the penalty count by an incredible differential of 18-7 and controversy surrounded one decision to award a try and another decision to disallow a try. Just prior to half-time, Wests winger and club legend Peter Dimond chased through an Arthur Summons kick, collected it and there seems to be little doubt that the ball was grounded in the in-goal. Lawler ruled no-try on the basis that the ball was not grounded. When Summons protested, Lawler threatened to send him to the showers. That controversy, however, often takes a back seat to the latter decision of Lawler’s to award a runaway try to Saints speedster Johnny King. King, who had been tackled by a number of Wests players including Noel Kelly, just got up and ran down the SCG sideline to score what would turn out to be the match-winner. Wests players were adamant that Lawler had called held and to get off the tackled player yet when King took off, Lawler allowed play to continue. Fans of Western Suburbs to this day remain livid that the try was allowed to stand, holding the play as irrefutable proof that Lawler was on the take.
Anecdotal evidence from the game also suggests that Lawler’s position was public knowledge. When Jack Gibson and Norm Provan were finally pulled from the mud after brawling without fear, Lawler threatened to give Gibson an early shower. Gibson, in a manner one would assume was dry and without humour, allegedly replied: “Send me off and I’ll give you up”.
In the end, the Saints won 8-3 and Arthur Summons and Norm Provan walked off arm-in-arm, covered in mud and slop. Darcy Lawler, had the rumours been true, collected and immediately retired from officiating. And in the absence of television where the cultural norms on “dobbing” were much different, the case against Lawler proved too difficult to establish for the powerbrokers of the game with not so much as an official investigation into the allegations.
To this day, some forty-five years on, the game stands as one of the most controversial and hotly debated in a century of rugby league. Never have the worlds of gambling and rugby league collided so messily. And the mystery will always remain, the legend forever growing. Did Darcy Lawler fix the 1963 Grand Final? For those who support Wests, the answer is a resounding yes. For the rest, too many years and months and weeks and days and hours have passed. The answer remains buried somewhere in the underbelly of the game they call the greatest of all.
Punting Profiles would like to thank Ray Chesterton and his book “100 Years of Rugby League: A Celebration of the Greatest Game of All” for much of the information contained in the above article.
This story was first printed on Punting Ace in 2008
