Willow shuffles through his old scribblings, and takes his first hit up for 2009.
My Favourite Game of League is...
Perhaps my favourite game of rugby league was a match played almost 40 years before I was born.
It wasn't a grand final, nor was it a Test match. The game that sparked my imagination was a friendly played between St George and Goulburn one winter's day in 1921.
It should have been a forgotten country trial game, but it was made extraordinary by a snow storm hitting the playing surface just before kick off. For reasons I have yet to come to terms with, I sometimes 'recall' being there. If for nothing else but to get a handle on what the players went through.
The records show it was a sunny winter's morning in July when the St George District Rugby League Club assembled players and officials on a Sydney railway platform. Household names in their day, Lyall Wall, Ernie Lapham, and Clarrie Tye were amongst those boarding the excursion train bound for Goulburn.
You and I were there as well.
It would be decades before iPhones, and the Foxtel Weather Channel was nowhere to be seen. The morning newspaper was the only media available in the carriage. At best, we had sketchy details of a possible cold change south of Sydney.
It was on the approach to Moss Vale when sunshine soon gave way to rain. Then, as the train neared its destination, the wind was picking up and snow was falling. By the time we arrived in Goulburn, near blizzard conditions had enveloped the area.
A travelling journalist for
The Call, Rambler, described the conditions as: The worst I ever saw for football in all my 34 years experience.
The players made their way onto the field in front of an almost empty stand. Intensely cold winds and snow swept through the area. The St George captain, Herb Gilbert Senior, shook hands with the Goulburn captain as players danced around the middle of the freezing pitch.
We took refuge where we could.
A St George player, Sid Thompson later joked about it all: It was absolutely freezing and the ground was icy and hard. I remember a loose ball behind the line and Reg Fusedale calling to me, Dive on it! I replied, Dive on it your bloody self!
By halftime, Goulburn managed to score three tries to take a 13-0 lead.
Neither side fancied another half of being delivered to the ice-hardened turf. But Herb Gilbert Senior - a tough bastard - ordered his players to change ends and continue. Saints trudged back out for another round, but despite holding a handy lead the Goulburnites simply refused to return to the field. Much to the relief of most in attendance, the home side looked to the sheds and just kept walking, thereby forfeiting the match to St George.
The scenes immediately afterwards were a sight to behold. The bath and fireplace were in great demand, and the players gear stood literally frozen as a brief monument in time to the Goulburn blizzard.
|500 words|
|Ref: Book: 'Saints - The Legend Lives On' by Ian Heads|
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