George Piggins talks South Sydney, Russell Crowe, Adam Reynolds, the no-punch rule and attending games
He has fallen back in love with South Sydney and is desperately cheering for the Rabbitohs to beat arch-rivals the Roosters in Friday night’s blockbuster at ANZ Stadium.
And then win their first grand final since 1971, the year he played hooker in a 16-10 victory over St George at the Sydney Cricket Ground.
The Souths legend spoke to sports editor-at-large Phil Rothfield on Tuesday about his dream of the Rabbitohs winning their 21st premiership.
No punch rule
Talk about a man changing …
Piggins was renowned as one of the roughest, toughest and hardest men to play the game.
So it’s surprising he supports the NRL crackdown on foul play, including the ban on punching.
This is the guy who almost gouged Malcolm Reilly’s eye out in one of the dirtiest one-on-one fights in rugby league history.
“Let’s be fair dinkum,” he says. “If a big man throws a good punch, it could probably kill you.
“I used to like that part of the contest but the world has changed.
“If the game doesn't appeal to mums and dads, where are we going to get our future footballers from?
“If you've got a son, he’s 17 or 18, a good style of a kid, and he starts coming home with a smashed up face, broken nose and teeth knocked out, you’re not going to be happy about it.
“Or if you’re son gets his jaw broken, is his mother going to want him to play?”
He has often been asked to speak at functions with Reilly about the afternoon they traded headbutts and punches at Redfern Oval.
“It was something I’m not proud of,” he says. “I don’t want to teach kids to do that sort of stuff to each other.”
Attending games
We’re sitting in Piggins’ loungeroom at his waterfront South Coogee home and I ask if he’ll attend the grand final if Souths make it.
He’s 70 now, has just had knee surgery, and you can understand the appeal of the loungeroom.
He hasn’t been to a game since members turned on him when Russell Crowe bought the club.
“I’ll be watching from here,” he says. “I’m happy watching it with my family.
“There are going to be nearly 100,000 people there and there’s always one mug.
“If some bloke has a go at me and I bristled, it’d be the worst thing.
“Why put myself in that position? I don’t need it. It only takes one mug and you’re in a blue.
“People my age should be watching on TV anyway. It’s craziness getting in and out of that car park. I’ll watch it from home.”
I suggest he deserves to be there. That the fans, coach and players would want him there.
f someone donates $100,000 to charity, I’ll go … 50 grand to the two children’s hospitals.
“If someone wants me at the footy that bad … I’d do it for charity. That’s the only way.”
The failed merger
If it wasn’t for this tough and stubborn old Mascot junior, Souths and Easts wouldn’t be playing this weekend. Instead, they would have gone down the same path as St George and Illawarra, Wests and Balmain, Manly and Norths.
He recalls a dinner at Kerry Packer’s home in Bellevue Hill around Super League time when all the clubs were scrambling for survival.
“We sat down at Packer’s house and there was Kerry, me, Alan Jones and Nick Politis,” he said.
“Kerry explained what he’d like to see happen between Easts and Souths and a merger.
“I turned to Nick and said I’ve only got one question … what percentage of the say will Souths get. He looked at me and said none.”
Piggins got up and was about to walk out.
“Next minute the butler came out and took all the orders,” he said. “Oysters and everything else. Anyway, dinner finished and Kerry said goodnight to Nick.
“He said to Alan Jones and myself, ‘let’s go down to the Cosmopolitan at Double Bay for a drink’. I don’t drink but we went down there.
“We had a chat and he agreed to give us $750,000 for three years.
“So we never merged but I got enough money that night to keep us going.”
The Easts rivalry
Piggins says the talk of hatred is mostly a myth. Or more the way fans feel about it.
“I’ll always say hello to Nick Politis if I run into him,” he said. “There’s no problem there.
“I respect him. He has done a wonderful job at the Roosters.
“My closest friends — Cootey, Bunny Reilly and Peardy — all played for Easts.
“I don’t hate them at all. I don’t hate anyone. In fact, if Souths weren’t in the finals I used to barrack for Easts or Newtown.
“I had a rivalry with everyone I played against because you wanted to beat them.”
The players
I expect him to be raving about the Burgess boys and the ruthless and explosive style of footy they play. A bit like his old approach to the game.
His favourites are the local juniors — John Sutton, Adam Reynolds, Dylan Walker, Jason Clark and boom young winger Alex Johnston.
He tells a lovely story about the day he met Reynolds and Clark last year at a function.
“They came over, shook hands and said hello,” he said. “They were very polite young blokes. “They said they wouldn’t be wearing the jersey if it wasn’t for me. It was very special and meant a lot to me.
“I get a kick out of watching our juniors and I love watching Greg Inglis.”
I ask if he would be prepared to address the players before the game this weekend.
Or even just write them a note coach Michael Maguire could read to the team.
“The coach is a great coach,” he says. “The accolades should be all his and it could look like I’m trying to steel his thunder.
“My privilege will be watching them win. It’s his team. They don’t need me to win a grand final or beat Easts.
“He’s going to make them win or lose by the way he has coached them all year, not me.”
The Rabbitohs
Piggins no longer harbours resentment against the club, officials or fans who kicked him out when Crowe and Peter Holmes a Court bought the club.
“Of course I’m cheering for them,” he said. “I really hope they win. It has been 43 years.”
Piggins was the hooker that day in 1971 when Souths beat St George 16-10.
He is too modest to go into detail about the role he played that day, when play-the-balls were a contest, and four or five times he stole valuable possession by raking the ball back.
“Can they win it?” he says. “There are four teams left and they’ve got as much chance as anyone. It’s a great pack and if those Burgess boys are pumped up … you never know.
“The Roosters had a tough game last week. It might have taken something out of them.
“I’d just love to see them do it.”
The legend
George Piggins is to South Sydney what the Harbour Bridge is to this city.
Without him, there would have been no club for Russell Crowe or Peter Holmes a Court to buy or save.
“We mortgaged my house and my farm one year and we could have lost everything,” he said. “But the club needed the money. We were worse off than desperate.
“That’s how much the club meant to me.”
He blames Bob Carr’s Labor government for the fact the club almost died.
“Carr came in and taxed the shit out of us,” he said.
“He was the one who hurt rugby league more than anyone else.
“We were a community club and it wasn’t just the footy team relying on us.”
The coach
Piggins even coached the Rabbitohs free of charge.
“We had no money for anything, let alone a coach,” he said. “I’d just got a trainer’s licence and was going to train horses.
“But they asked me to coach the footy team, so I did. It was about the time Clive Churchill was dying. I was very close to him.”
Piggins was a better coach than many gave him credit for.
Way before it became common practice, he once tried to move Craig Coleman to hooker and use Phil Blake at halfback like they do these days.
He pulled back only because Mario Fenech didn’t want to play in the second row.
He also won two coach-of-the-year awards.
“I sometimes got the s...s if they were playing soft,” he said. “I’d run at them at training and smash into ’em.
“I’d tackle them and show them how I wanted it done.”
He had a good eye for a footballer too, almost snaring Johnathan Thurston from the Bulldogs in 2002 when he was still playing in reserve grade.
Russell Crowe
Piggins no longer cares for the public slanging matches. He has moved on.
But he wants to set the record straight on why he opposed selling the club.
“I don’t care if it’s Russell Crowe of Robert Redford,” he says. “My argument at the time is he’s not going to be around forever.
“You have a committee that runs a football club and a committee is there forever, although the people and faces change.
“If you’ve got an owner, it’s got to come to an end sometime. That’s why I opposed it.
“If his family don’t want to put the money in one day, what do we do?
“Owners are hard to find. If you can’t find one, you’re dead.”
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