From the Daily Telegraph, a beautiful story,
Why Rabbitohs will pay tribute to Lionel Potter when they face Manly in Preliminary Final
When Souths came up with a ploy to start all-in brawls in the 1980s, they honoured Lionel Potter with the call sign. He just had that kind of impact on the club, remembers Paul Kent.
When South Sydney run out wearing black armbands on Friday night, for the memory of Lionel Potter, the soul of the club will be on their arms.
Lionel passed away on Saturday. He would have turned 85 on Tuesday.
“His contribution,” said Craig Coleman, “was as good as any player that has been here. I’m just so proud Souths are honouring him.”
Former Souths star David Boyle with Lionel Potter.
Lionel arrived at South Sydney with Jack Gibson in 1978.
They met some years earlier when Gibson would take players into the prisons to play footy and Lionel was at Parramatta Jail as a guest of Her Majesty, being formerly employed with Darcy Dugan’s Lavender Hill Mob.
“How long you got to go?” Jack asked one day.
He still had some years left on his run but Jack stayed in touch and Lionel, a constant letter writer, would write to Jack at Easts with various tips on conditioning and play and that sort of thing, and all enough to impress the coach.
Gibson told him that once he was released he would have a job for him and, when his parole came up, Jack helped out with a quiet word and Lionel was released and had a job as a conditioner at Souths.
Lionel Potter will be missed by the Rabbitohs.
One of his first jobs was to get Charlie Frith fit.
Charlie could hit like few ever could but that was no good to Jack if he wasn’t fit enough to last the game, so he turned him over to Lionel.
All these years later Charlie, now living in Roma, can still remember Lionel with him at Centennial Park one morning before work.
“I just have this memory of me vomiting and Lionel standing there, jogging on the spot, and then when I’d finished we’d go on,” he said.
“And then five the next morning he’d come and knock on your door and get you up to go running again.
Lionel Potter knocked Charlie Frith into shape.
“Everyone appreciated Lionel.”
While Jack moved on, Lionel, whose nickname was Henry, had Souths in his blood.
Some years later a young kid called Les Davidson rolled into training riding a red and green pushbike with his jeans rolled up to his knees to stop the chain grease staining them and thongs protecting his feet.
Lionel took one look at this sight and worried immediately, afraid that if Davidson was going to continue dressing like that he would get picked on.
He rang Des Lewis, who used to stop all the trouble from happening at the old card games up at Kings Cross, and told him he had a kid who needed to learn how to handle himself.
“Tell him I’ll meet him at Giles Gym tomorrow,” Des said.
The next day Lionel answered the phone and it was Des.
“He’s a snag,” Des said, which meant something completely different back then to what it means now. It meant a trap.
“Nobody will beat him in the ARL,” Des said, “he carries dynamite in both hands.”
Souths quickly found out Les Davidson knew how to handle himself.
After that Lionel knew Davidson would be all right, which was fortunate because he arrived when Ron Willey was Rabbitohs coach and had inherited a pack high on toughness but light on subtlety, so he knew he needed to find more blunt ways to win.
The Rabbitohs came up with the ploy to start all-in brawls to upset the opposition’s rhythm and Dean Rampling was put in charge of calling it in a pack that boasted not only Rampling and Davidson but Rampling’s brother Tony, David Boyle, Mario Fenech and assorted others.
The call sign was Henry, named after Lionel. Rampling usually saved it for scrums but once Henry was called, and it was called often, the Rabbitohs would turn momentum their way.
Sometime around then the Rabbitohs went on their end of season trip to America and, when they landed in San Francisco, Lionel took them to watch the 49ers train.
Not long after arriving, former 49ers end RC “Alley Oop” Owens, a specialist coach, came down the tunnel, asking, “Where’s Coach? Where’s Coach?”
One of the Rabbitohs pointed towards a 49ers coach nearby.
“No, no, I’m looking for Coach Potter,” Owens said.
It turned out Lionel had been writing to 49ers head coach Bill Walsh for years and was well-known inside the 49ers organisation.
“Joe needs to see you,” Owens said to Lionel. Joe Montana had tennis elbow and wasn’t training that day but wanted Lionel to go in and take a look at him.
Lionel wrote letters regularly to Walsh and another former NFL coach, Chuck Nolan, whom he met through Jack.
In his time at Souths, Lionel had an influence on them all, but was particularly drawn to the forwards. He admired silent toughness.
Before games Tugger Coleman would always look across at Boyle whenever Lionel was nearby.
“Are you going to have a go today. Boyley?”
Lionel would look at Tugger and give a smirk.
And after every game when Boyle would collapse, wrecked with effort, Coleman would find Lionel and ask, “Did Boyley have a go today?”
Lionel always gave a smile and a wink.
As Lionel got older and his time at Souths ended after the 1999 season, he still followed the Rabbitohs, by now forever in his blood, and the players became his family.
Johnny Lewis, the fight trainer, was at the footy with Russell Cox in early 2005 when Cox looked over the heads in the crowd.
Craig Coleman entertains Lionel Potter at one of his Christmas luncheons.
“There’s Lionel Potter!” he said. “I’ve got to talk to Lionel.”
They met at Parramatta in the 1970s but had fallen out of contact for many years, and for many good reasons, but that afternoon their friendship resumed.
“I’ve never heard anyone say anything bad about Lionel and my view is, if they did, they didn’t know him,” Cox said.
“He was a great bloke. He was exactly the same in the nick. Everyone admired Lionel.”
Cox shared time with Lionel at Parramatta Jail where Lionel got the boxing program introduced.
Earlier this year before Covid, they caught up again when Cox visited Sydney. They spoke for the last time just a few weeks back.
For 25 years Coleman would put a Christmas present for Lionel under his tree, which he gave him at Christmas lunch.
Before lunch was over, Coleman’s wife, Debbie, would load him with weeks worth of food to take home.
As he grew older, Ricky Montgomery, another former Souths player, would pick him up and take him to his doctor appointments or for whatever else Lionel needed.
Having given for so long, shared so much, the old Souths boys were looking after each other.
Just a few weeks back Frith called Lionel to tell him a mate of theirs was sick.
“Straight away he was up at the hospital,” Frith says. “Took him a paper. After that he took one up every day, even though he was too sick to read it.”
Then Lionel got sick with a series of small strokes.
Montgomery called him over the weekend and got no answer so went around to check he was okay.
This is the fate of old men.
Montgomery peeked through a window and saw the bed was not slept in and immediately got worried Lionel was down somewhere in his flat.
As he looked through windows, a neighbour told him an ambulance had taken him away on Saturday.
Lionel died later that day, the old Rabbitohs carrying a heavy heart all weekend.
“All he ever done was give, give, give,” Coleman said.
“And he wanted nothing in return.”
And so on Friday night the new Rabbitohs will give a small piece of them back to him, carrying him on their sleeve, a black arm band, as they strive to qualify for the grand final.
All they will need to do is what Lionel always did, which was give.
