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Vale Alan Clarkson, a gentleman of rugby league and journalism
Roy Masters
Rugby league has lost the last of its gentleman reporters with the death of Alan Clarkson who covered sport for The Sydney Morning Herald for 33 years.
Clarkson's news cycle covered the 10 hours between 11.30am, when the first edition of The Sun and The Mirror landed on Sydney streets, and 9.30pm when the first edition of the Herald went to bed.
Alan Clarkson in 1977.
His byline on the back page of the Herald was identified with credibility, accuracy, lack of sensationalism and devoid of agendas.
He was sometimes lampooned by his rivals for writing a piece that had already appeared in their publications but he argued the story had not been written until it appeared in the Herald.
"It is the paper of record," he would say, somewhat piously.
He was fortunate to miss today's 24-hour, seven-days-a-week 140-character twitterverse where stories are still evolving when they are written and the competition in media is not for truth but for immediacy, to be first published online.
Not for him a world where the prose of a thoughtful column has a life span shorter than a house fly.
He belonged to an era when a journalist's biggest fear was a grave error in the headline or the opening par, not whether he should have rushed to print with a half-checked story.
He counted his friendships while others tallied the number of feuds his colleagues festered.
I knew "Clarko" first as a rugby league coach, then as a colleague, joining the Herald in 1988, my first year with the paper and his last as a full-time reporter.
We also shared the indescribable grief of each losing a teenage son after a long illness, "Clarko" having lost Peter a few years before Paul died in 1984.
He had missed the funeral because he was overseas and arranged for a Mass in Paul's memory.
I recall having coffee with him afterwards and studying the face of this deeply compassionate man and inwardly rebuking myself for all the misdirected injury reports I had sent his way, as coach of Wests and St George.
This was a time when the chief rugby league reporter for the morning papers would phone the club's training ground on a Tuesday evening and ask for the weekend team.
Many of us adopted the diagonal injury rule, which is to say that if a player had a crook left ankle, his injury was reported as a sore right shoulder.
"Clarko" was never one to attack the keys of his typewriter with a cosh.
He did not delight in exposing the sins of others and, sadly, players exploited this, knowing he treated as sacrosanct the "what goes on tour, stays on tour" credo.
Towards the end of his time at the Herald, his editor sent a young reporter on a tour of New Zealand with the Australian team.
"Clarko" had covered five Kangaroo tours, a World Cup in Britain and three Olympic Games, so another New Zealand tour was something he did not mind missing.
On this particular tour, the players began a "We want Clarko" chant on the team bus to the embarrassment of the Herald's young reporter travelling with them.
Back in Sydney the ignominy in the Herald office was felt by all, none more so than "Clarko".
Tennis was his real sporting love and he continued to cover Davis Cups and Australian Opens part-time for the Herald.
Players such as John Newcombe invited him for beers at the end of tours which tells you two things: "Clarko" accommodated their "atrocities" in the same way he did the "leaguies" and he could still be on his feet at 3am.
He was awarded an OAM in 1990 for services to sport journalism.
The 2002 Tom Brock lecture was delivered by Alan and he points to a proud moment when he wrote a prepared obituary of Clive Churchill who was then seriously ill.
They had both attended Marist Brothers school, Hamilton, and "Clarko" had been in the crowd at Redfern when "Tigger", as Novocastrians called the brilliant fullback, played his first game for Souths.
"Clarko" was so proud of the piece he suggested the Herald run it so Clive could read it.
"We sent out a photographer and Clive, as usual, co-operated, walking along Coogee beach to give some pictorial impact to the story," Clarkson said in his 2002 lecture.
It is a gesture I wish I had made to Alan ahead of his death on Monday night, aged 85.
