The Passing of the Years: A Romantic Reflection on Sporting Sydney

We live a very isolated existence these days. We think we are more connected than we actually are with mobile phones, email, Facebook, Twitter, cheap airfares, internet streaming, satellite television and Skype. The price of such global connectivity, however, is local community engagement and the fostering of interpersonal relationships.

It is certainly that way for the modern day punter and sports fan. We can get set anywhere around the world with the click of a button or a simple call from wherever we are, betting on any race or sport that takes our fancy. There are hundreds of companies where accounts can be set up, odds flashed and bets made all with the shift of the mouse and the punching of a few computer keys. We can watch races and sports from around the world on television or over the internet. We can get track conditions, late mail, team changes, injury news and race fields all without getting out of bed. Every game and every race can be seen on big screen high definition televisions located in our very own living room. It is all very convenient and most of us couldn’t imagine life any other way but once upon a time it was and it wasn’t all that long ago.

I was spurred to take this trip down memory lane after a conversation with legendary racing scribe Max Presnell. Max understands better than most the impact of rugby league and racing on Sydney in the middle years of the last century. He knew all the colourful racing identities of the day. He understood the social value of the linkage between footy and racing and the punt. He knew the way a community was built and sustained around the local footy team and SP bookie and how the times were so very different.

Back before television, most Saturday’s were spent either at the footy or at the track. Presnell, a Kensington boy and South Sydney diehard with one cardinal eye and the other myrtle, would wander down to Redfern Oval to watch all three grades run around on the chilly winter Saturday afternoons. They were some grand times for Bunnies fans with Clive Chuchill and Jack Rayner and Ian Moir and Bernie Purcell all running around, winning premierships. On Sunday, he would head to places like Coogee Oval to watch the juniors play. There was no footy on the television so if you followed the game you went to the ground to watch it. Balmain boys would wander down to Leichardt for a meat pie and old Golden Boots. Bankstown locals would head out to Belmore to see Eddie Burns or Clive Gartner or Les Johns. Bluebaggers would make their way to Henson Park to see local cop “Bumper” Farrell knock some teeth out and create a few cauliflowered ears. Those in red and white would be at Kogarah Oval to barrack for the incredible Saints teams.

You would watch so much footy you knew everything about your club. You saw the juniors come through the ranks. You knew the hard nuts playing lower grades. Max even recalled an old brewery worker named Jim Faint who played for Chelsea United in the local South Sydney competition. He was as strong as an ox and legend had it he could hurl full kegs around without raising a sweat. One day after Chelsea lost by a point in what is alleged to be a somewhat controversial finish, a game which Faint missed due to suspension, a full as boot Faint made his way to the referee with two kegs in hand. It was only his consumption of a good portion of same that saved the referee from a keg in the ear that day. How true this tale is will never be known but it tells a nice tale of how important rugby league was back then and some fifty years later it is still recalled.

Rugby league and sport really, was very much a local thing back in the middle part of last century. Everyone in a district followed the local team. You would have to pick up the Saturday evening edition of the Sun or the Telegraph or the Herald on your way home to get the final scores from the other matches. Even the newspapers were very much focussed locally. What was happening at Redfern or the Doncaster Hotel was more important than what was happening in London or New York or even Melbourne. There were no VFL scores. Little attention was given to the golf majors and Wimbledon would only get a look in if an Australian was doing well. Baseball and American Football were as foreign as Mozambique and beef chow mien. Rugby union didn’t exist south of the Harbour Bridge, a “game for the silver-spooners”. Even the great fight champs of the day, Jimmy Caruthers and Dave Sands, only got a few paragraphs when they went on their overseas traverses even though their deeds were far greater and more historically important than the imposters like Mundine and Green who roll around today. It was rugby league and racing that sold papers and it was rugby league and racing that acted as a form of social glue, building communities behind a common cause.

Both were certainly linked. For a man in the fifties and sixties, it was all footy and racing and the punt come the weekend. Rugby league and horse racing and the punt were intertwined, entrenched in the social fabric in Sydney. Joe Taylor, the most fearless gambler in Sydney in the middle third of last century and the owner of the infamous Thommo’s Two-Up School, was an avid supporter of rugby league, an Eastern Suburbs man to his boot straps. Taylor was one of the most famous men in Sydney of his era, a feared gambler but a generous friend and a gracious host. Bill Waterhouse once said of him that if he was to ever fear one gambler then Taylor would be the one because he truly didn’t give a damn about money. Taylor once professed that if he ever had $500,000 he would love to bet it on a racehorse. Money was merely a means to gamble.

Taylor had a strong connection to rugby league. He played as a young man and his son Ronnie played first grade for both Easts and Souths. Joe was known to bet on the footy and action on the footy was renowned at Taylor’s illegal casinos and two-up schools. Joe also owned a team in the Eastern Suburbs A-Grade competition known as Taylor’s Celebrity Club, named after the Celebrity Club, a popular nightspot he owned on York Street. It was here he first became acquainted with Jack Gibson, the Supercoach, who joined the Celebrity Club in 1950 before forging out a career as a rugged prop with Easts, Newtown and Western Suburbs.

Gibson himself was heavily immersed in the punting game. He worked as a doorman at Thommo’s Two-Up school and was known as an SP bookie. Few ever messed with him at the door and he had few problems collecting debts of those punters he extended credit too. While Jack was heavily involved in the punting scene, he was never once implicated in anything scandalous or untoward when it came to rugby league.

Big Jack had his finger on the punting pulse though. He knew all the colourful characters of the day. Excitement George, Bondi Jack, Paddy the Rat, Nixi the Flea, Big Itchy. And he knew the score. Before the 1963 Grand Final, when Gibson was holding up the Western Suburbs scrum, he told his team that they were off before the game. Word had it that the referee Darcy Lawler had wagered ₤600 on the Dragons. Lawler had been branded a cheat by British touring sides of 1958 and 1962 and to this day Arthur Summons, the Western Suburbs captain, holds firm in his belief that Lawler wasn’t on the up and up that day. The Magpies copped an 18-7 caning in the penalty count and the Dragons only try was scored in controversial circumstances with Wests players to this day adamant Johnny King was tackled before getting up and running in for a try.

There are plenty of other stories that have been passed on down the years related to rugby league and gambling. One referee was known to have his own betting cards, an illegal and crude precursor to Footytab where he made a lot more than he did from his refereeing wage. Another referee was alleged to have been well in the hole on the punt and to square up he supposedly favoured certain teams. There was the story of a Balmain player who was sent back to the country after he was found to have bet against the Tigers in a game he was playing in. He was sent home on a different pretext but all the punters knew the real story.

Many players acted as standover men and collection agents for SP bookies. Quite a few bet the horses. Plenty would meet at the Carlisle Club or the Celebrity Club before playing in either the Big Game or the Snake Pit.

Controversial former Balmain and NSWRL boss Kevin Humphreys was another caught up in gambling. It was gambling debts that bought Humphreys down in the end with Humphreys accused of taking money from Balmain when he was boss of the club to repay debts accrued on horse racing and other wagering ventures. Humphreys along with Manly boss and his successor as boss of the League Ken Arthurson were also accused of running a two-up school in Brookvale, an allegation Humpreys described as a “wicked lie” before suing The Daily Mirror. In the end it all led to the Street Royal Commission that saw a sitting chief magistrate of the New South Wales Supreme Court imprisoned and Humphreys resigning as boss of the League.

Humphreys was widely criticised in 1981 for attending the wedding of renowned colourful racing identity George Freeman. Freeman, along with fellow underworld figure Lenny McPherson, were both Balmain boys and avid Tigers fans. They could often be found down behind the goal-posts at Leichardt Oval where all the bookies used to meet and watch the sport. Occasionally they could be found on the Paddo Hill at the Sydney Cricket Ground if Balmain had the game of the week.

Freeman and McPherson were both known for their involvement in illegal gambling and SP bookmaking. They were far from the only one’s involved in illegal SP bookmaking. Every suburb had numerous SP bookies before the TAB opened up and even in the years after it. Down at the barber shop or the local pub, every area had a bookie and though it was illegal it was widely known where to get set. And everyone bet. From the big timers down to the housewives who would fill out their all-up slips for a shilling, everyone played the horses back in the day. It was a way of life. The local constable would get a sling to turn a blind eye. The bookies would keep the crims in order. It bought the community together and created a form of social order. Everyone rushed out to get the Herald on a Saturday night to get the official SP prices.

Most of us wouldn’t know what to do without the conveniences we are afforded today. I can flick between Fox and Sky and watch the league and the racing. My laptop set up with various betting accounts open, my mobile at hand. Tipping sheets and the late mail all at my finger tips. But there was something romantic about the old days, a kind of rough charm that has me yearning for a different time. A time of colour and afternoons watching footy on the hill, of nights at Thommo’s Two-Up school with Excitement Eddie and Big Itchy (particularly the night when Big Itchy propositioned one of the Andrews Sisters right there in the ring and was duly accepted, the one and only time a female was allowed into Thommo’s according to author David Hickie). Of packed racecourses with Joe Taylor and Hollywood George Edser and George Freeman and Perce Galea. Of winking at the cockatoo on my way to a Saturday afternoon haircut. Of bloody and muddy games of league where the ref was on the take and the starting prop knew about it and the local cop was beating heads and the gambling establishment watched on from behind the posts. It may just be a silly nostalgia kick but those times sure did seem interesting.