Parramatta's Zip Zip man Steve Ella remembers the 1981 grand final
Giving back: Steve Ella in his Gosford office where he works with Aboriginal people. Picture: Robert McKell
Source: The Daily Telegraph
HE is and always will be the Zip Zip man.
The one they said had more talent than all of them until his knee went, and then went again and then three more times after that, and his shoulder went five times and his wrist went twice.
Even after all that, Steve Ella was still better than pretty good.
The body went again after he retired.
Ella was a landscape gardener throughout his career, and after injuries finally retired him in 1989 they soon started shortening his stride at work, too, and he realised he needed to find something else.
And this is where a guy can get lucky. Sometimes, the work finds you.
"I feel very fortunate," he says. "I feel more privileged being able to do the work I do. You see people in tragic circumstances and and you're able to work them through those tough situations."
Ella, now 50, spoke to a friend in Aboriginal drug and alcohol counselling and, shortly after, a job opened and he interviewed and got the job.
The Aboriginal people couldn't have found a greater champion for their cause.
"There's a lot of tragedy out there," he says. "Especially when drugs and alcohol are concerned.
"We try to help people through the range of issues they come up with. The main issue is they're overwhelmed, our role is to break it down into manageable bits, and the more they see that happen the more they see the light at the end of the tunnel."
Which is perfect; no one in the game was better at finding daylight than Steve Ella.
The Parramatta team of the early 1980s is one of the most famous in rugby league, and even today are not hard to find. Peter Sterling commentates for Channel 9, Brett Kenny is in and out of coaching, Ray Price is never far away, John Muggleton coaches rugby, Mick Cronin, and we expected nothing less, still runs the family pub in Gerringong.
Yet they were largely rookies in 1981, led by Price and Cronin and fellow hardheads Bob O'Reilly, Steve Edge and Kevin Stevens.
Playing Newtown, the Eels were aiming to win the club's first premiership.
Graeme Atkins, now a happily married schoolteacher in the Blue Mountains, scored the try in the second half that put the Eels ahead, before Ella scored to put the Parramatta boys out of reach.
He was also inside Kenny when the famous dummy was thrown that saw Kenny go untouched down the sideline.
"They all went to me and left him open," Ella says. "He never credited it to me."
Every year the Eels from this period hold a reunion, taking turns to organise it. It's now the casual Eric Grothe's turn, which fills no one with much confidence.
"I might have to give him a call," Ella says.
Unlike many past players, many of whom yearn hard for the glory days, Ella realises life is life, and what he does today is every bit as important as what he used to do.
"I don't think too much about what I used to do, it's 22 years since I retired," he says. "Life's moved on. I've got five kids, I've got a grandson, two young boys."
