Hard man's long road to fame
BY JOHN MACDONALD
10 Aug, 2010 12:00 AM
AT AGE20, Graham Olling was running around for a lark with his mates in the Seven Hills B-grade rugby league team.``I loved the game but I loved the drink,'' he said.
``The biggest problem was I liked drinking down at the Seven Hills pub.''
At 30, the super-fit prop was being introduced to royalty before the first Test of the 1978 Kangaroo tour.
``I thought `Geez, this is amazing, my family is at home sitting up watching this','' Olling said.
``I used to go to the pub and go somewhere and sit up watching Tests and here I am.''
How Olling got there is the tale of a long journey without parallel in rugby league.
Nothing came easily to ``Shovels'' Olling, who got to the top step by step, club by club, team by team.
Every skill was hard-learned.
Like the left-foot step he would employ as a front-rower. He learned that from one of his Seven Hills mates, John Delaney.
``He was a very good side-stepper and he'd take me down the park to practice,'' Olling said.
``It was full of mounds and potholes and he showed me how he learned to step by dodging the potholes.''
Olling started as a teenager with Seven Hills rugby union club, switched to league with Seven Hills, then went to Wentworthville, where he won a premiership with the A-grade team and backed up to win the second-division grand final with Wenty.
He was a hard-running inside centre then and would be later criticised as a forward by the likes of Rex Mossop for not passing the ball.
``I was a bit bigger and a bit faster and as an inside centre I had to run myself. As a forward I thought my job was to defend, intimidate and make the hard yards in the middle.
``The St George packs with Youngy [Craig Young] and Rocket [Rod Reddy] would try to intimidate.
``They'd give it to me but if there were three or four of them they'd be using up energy and there'd be gaps elsewhere. Petero Civoniceva plays the same game now and no one criticises him.''
But those St George clashes were in the future. His Wenty games had attracted scouts' attention.
Olling chose Easts and soon realised he would have to get up early if he wanted to keep pace with the Roosters.
``A lot of them were in the surf club and training in the gym and I thought `Geez, there's a bit more to this than running on the field'.''
Olling spent three seasons with Easts, mainly in second grade, at a time when they had great forwards like Arthur Beetson and Ron Coote.
He was cut when the 13-import rule was introduced. But not before he came under the influence of Jack Gibson.
``They were the foundation years. Jack worked on skills a lot, like hit-and-spin and catching under pressure.
``Bob Jones, who worked at Easts then, told me a couple of years later he was playing golf with Jack and Arthur and they were talking about who was the best talent-picker.
``Jack reminded Arthur that he [Beetson] suggested I be cut because he didn't think I'd make it.''
By then Olling had made it with Parramatta, after a chance meeting with another Seven Hills boy, former Parramatta international Keith Campbell. ``We were having a drink and he suggested I give Parramatta a try.''
By that time, Olling's pub days were far behind him. He was training with George Daldry at City Tatts four days a week, superfit and a prop capable of playing 80 minutes at a time when forwards still had to compete in energy-sapping scrums.
There were two great set-pieces.
One was the 1977 grand final replay against St George after the 9-9 draw in the first decider. It was the game in which St George's Rod Reddy received five cautions.
``We'd heard Reddy was pretty crook, that he'd target Ray Price and wouldn't last the game, and he didn't,'' the prop said.
Olling was raked over the back of the head after a scrum and needed 15 stitches for a scalp wound.
``Terry Fearnley told us `Just play the game, don't retaliate' before the replay.''
Does renowned hard man Olling think the 22-0 score might have been different if Parramatta had not followed the coach's instructions? ``No. There probably would have been two blokes sent off and it would've affected us more.''
The other set-piece was the great controversy of Olling's career his admitting to taking steroids.
``Like everyone, I'd heard about them and was concerned I was losing weight during the season.''
He consulted Daldry who referred him to a doctor but Olling discontinued the course after six weeks. ``I was taking what would now be considered therapeutic doses. It may have helped a bit aerobically but had no effect on my weight,'' he said, adding he built up to his Kangaroo-tour 106-kilogram size through weights and gym work.
By the tour, the no-passing criticism had abated.
``Terry Fearnley encouraged me to unload more after Denis Fitzgerald got ill and it made the game a bit more pleasurable.''
The first Test of that 1978 tour was memorable, if not pleasurable.
``Frankie Stanton said it was called a Test match because it was a test of strength, durability, spirit and toughness,'' he said of the coach's pre-game oration. ``I got elbowed in the face in the first five minutes.''
Australia won but the Kangaroos lost a spiteful second Test.
``It was really tough. Jim Mills got me a beauty. He kneed me in the back and I remember Chris Anderson went off on the touchline but the touch judge did nothing.''
Stanton praised Olling's game but the injured back kept him out of the third Ashes-winning Test and he didn't reappear until late in the tour in France.
Olling was in the best form of his career in 1979 and was picked in the NSW team to play the touring Great Britain.
He was anticipating a get-square with English prop Mills but injured his knee in the preceding club game.
There followed 18 months of setbacks before the knee came good. ``Parramatta announced Jack would be coaching but I didn't think I'd be able to keep up,'' he said of Gibson's arrival and the three straight premierships ahead.
Olling accepted a captain/coach's role with Temora in 1981 and represented Country against City.
``I went in the dressingroom after Parramatta's grand final win and Ron Massey [Gibson's right-hand man] said: `Geez, Graham, we thought you were stuffed and never thought of contacting you, and then we saw you play for Country'. I've no regrets. It was great in the bush.
``Our son was only four months old and it was really good for our three kids.''
Olling now lives at Scarborough, on the water just north of Brisbane.
The body's still good after all the poundings.
The committed Christian walks a lot, rather than run, but did compete in a half-marathon a few years back.
Olling works in a distillery blending spirits. ``I love it. It's highly technical and interesting.''
But he doesn't drink them. He's still a beer man.
