The game that saved rugby league
September 30, 2007
The ground moved in Newcastle 10 years ago, but this time it was caused by an extraordinary game of rugby league and not an earthquake, Will Swanton writes.
NEWCASTLE beat Manly in the 1997 ARL grand final - and a lost sport was found.
Ten years ago. Two competitions. More hatred than a spit between the ARL and Super League. A team of battlers representing a town reeling from the closure of BHP and thousands of jobs gone up in smoke.
The Knights had never won the premiership. Manly was a super power full of Test players coached by the great Bob Fulton.
They had beaten - no, thumped - the Knights on 11 straight occasions. Lambs were being sent to the slaughter.
But Newcastle won. It was a bigger thriller than anything Hitchcock ever came up with.
Enough of a fairytale to make Cinderella weep.
"So many circumstances made that grand final something very, very special," then Knights captain Paul Harragon says. "It was the 200-year bicentenary of the town.
"We were against a team we hadn't beaten in years. They'd flogged us. There was another team in Newcastle, the Hunter Mariners with Super League, and that had a lot of people arguing.
"The BHP was shut, jobs were gone, but all of a sudden we made the grand final and people were up. There was this massive surge of energy and all this momentum behind us because an entire city was behind us."
Tens of thousands of Novocastrians lined the streets and freeway in a guard of honour as the Knights' bus headed for Sydney.
Harragon, as passionate a soul as you could get, gazed out the window and told himself: "This is more than a footy match".
"The emotion was something I'll never forget," he says. "Just the looks in the eyes of all these people. It was quite an amazing, uplifting experience.
"People up here in Newcastle can still tell you where they were and what they were doing when we got up.
"There was an old lady who didn't realise there was a game on. She was at the traffic lights and the lights went green but no cars were moving. It was full-time and people were listening on the radio.
"All of a sudden horns started honking, people were out of their cars and jumping around on the street.
"She's sitting behind the wheel of her car not knowing what was going on. The whole street, the whole intersection, had come to a stop.
"She thought another earthquake was coming."
It was everything rugby league needed: a brutally close contest, a jaw-dropping finish, a barn-burning atmosphere generated by rabid fans. It had passion.
The Super League grand final between Brisbane and Cronulla was a yawn by comparison. It had all the bells and whistles but it wasn't real. Few people cared.
Newcastle and Manly reminded an increasingly sceptical league community how great their game could be.
Seven seconds left, 16-16. The Knights had possession near the right sideline. Harragon's front-row partner Tony Butterfield moved to dummy half.
The plan was to get the ball to the centre of the field for a drop goal attempt by Knights five-eighth Matthew Johns.
Butterfield would pass to Andrew Johns. Andrew would fire a bullet of a pass to Matthew. But Andrew had a last-minute change of heart, bolting to dummy half as Manly defenders John Hopoate and Cliff Lyons became lazy at marker.
Johns went down the blind and passed inside to put Darren Albert through the historic gap.
"It almost never happened," Butterfield says. "This is the genius of Johns. We were into the final minute and when you get down to the last few seconds, the clock starts flying.
"There were two plays left. I'm standing next to 'Chief' [Harragon]. The logical play was to get a clean ball to Joey and then another clean ball to Matty.
"I ran into dummy half. I'm looking at Joey. He's looking at me, he's looking at the line, he's looking in field, looking down the blind, looking at the clock, looking at Hoppa, looking at Cliffy.
"Just at that very last second, Joey has come running in saying, 'Piss off, Butts, piss off'. He had that twinkle in his eye.
"I've backed off and thought, 'What's he doing here?' I'm mesmerised.
"Alby [Albert] runs past me and gets the ball and that's the end of it."
Harragon recalls: "Mentally, I was getting ready for extra time. I was a little bit behind the play and I saw that gap because Manly's defence was normally absolutely spot on.
"There was an opening, and then it shut, but Darren Albert - the fastest player in the game at that time - went straight through it.
"It took a while to sink in. We'd won. And then we celebrated for a week, for months.
"A rugby league season is tough. There are always lows. But then that happens and you get the highest of highs. It's rarefied air when you win a grand final."
Butterfield says Albert's try encapsulated the promises held by grand finals. One moment that will never be forgotten.
"You can get a split second which can make history," he says.
"Hoppa and Cliffy had huge years and huge games but they thought they'd made their last tackles of the game before we hit extra time. They've taken a breath for just a few seconds and Joey has made them pay for it.
"That's the thing with grand finals - one mistake, or one brilliant play is all it can come down to. Drop your guard for one second and your season is gone.
"It was a seminal moment for Newcastle and for rugby league."
Harragon agrees.
"People older than you can imagine were screaming and jumping up and down on cars, it was a daytime grand final, it was the biggest crowd ever, there was so much red and blue in the crowd it was like running out at home," he says.
"After we won, it was mad. There were 40,000 or 50,000 people down in Sydney, more than 100,000 people waiting for us back in Newcastle.
"There was a whole week of celebrations. It was incredible. People were loving their rugby league again.
"I forgot there was another grand final. Brisbane played Cronulla, didn't they?
"In the last few years you get all the voting for the top grand finals of all time, and ours is No.1 in a lot of them, No.2 in others.
"It was special because of the timing. It was so important to the ARL and for the game."
Harragon's side of '97 held their 10-year reunion in Newcastle on Friday.
Those sorts of get-togethers usually involve embellishing past achievements so they begin to take on legendary status.
No embellishment was required on this occasion.
