SCRUMTOWN

BY JAMES SMITH How would something like this go down with the media and image-managers today, you reckon? Brett Cochrane’s two magnificent photo essays of the 1986 and 1990 Kangaroos Tours, which he made into the books "Mud Sweat And Cheers” and “Twenty Eight Heroes” respectively, contain some of the most dramatic and haunting rugby league-related images ever captured. But for silliness and tomfoolery and mug lairness-capturing, this spread of shots will never be beaten.  That’s Royce Simmons pretending to have been caught in the middle of a two-car prang on the ’86 Tour, and that’s Gene Miles looking on and Wally Lewis in the background shots. Scenes from Brett Cochrane's book "Mud, Sweat And Cheers".   Brett’s caption reads “a demolition derby at the end of the tour was the novel means by which players disposed of their cars”.  This checks out. I went looking for evidence of a Kangaroos “demolition derby” (which, incidentally, my Dead In Goal podcast partner Jeff C

BY JAMES SMITH  One of the truly fantastic corners of the rugby league world is the Dragons "Legends Walk" at Kogarah Oval in Carlton, Sydney. Opened back in March 2004, it currently recognises the footy heroics of 18 of the greatest and most famous players to have ever adorned the Red V, be that in the St George era or since the club's joint venture with Illawarra. This place is magic. Simple in design, the Walk stretches from the corner of Jubilee Ave and Park Street, right up to the main admin entrance of the famous old suburban ground. I didn't go for this reason, but when your author last rocked up to the monument, Norm "Sticks" Provan had just departed the world and the roses had begun piling up on his particular part of the display. "The Finisher" immortalised at Kogarah Oval.  I've always been fascinated by the names of the great players who were wowing crowds in the decades before I arrived on planet Earth. One player whose nam

BY JAMES SMITH Remember this absolute beauty?  Back in the days before the NRL app, about the only ways rugby league fans were able to send to run their eyes over the season draw and analyse their team's opponents was either via a giant wall chart from a newspaper, in the weekly Big League magazine or the Friday rugby league lift-out in the dailies ahead of the weekend.  Or there was the Winfield Cup season fixture card, of course! From very shoddy memory, these things were available everywhere, from inside newspapers, at servos, post offices and fish 'n' chip shops.  Never be left wondering who your team is playing ever again ... How it worked was, a yellow card with the season draw on it slid through .... you can probably work it all out for yourself judging by the pictures.  What it all meant was you could carry around the season draw in your wallet or purse or back pocket. This particular version of the Winfield Cup fixture card would have been the last of its kind, wit

Back in the days before players shared their man of the match winnings with their cheeky team-mates at kick-on drinks after a win, the best player of the afternoon scored for themselves this beautiful thing.   It was the NEC Big Game Ball Trophy. Now, we're not sure if they quickly dipped one of the match balls in gold straight after the siren and by the time Graeme Hughes had wondered over to you for a post-game chat to present the game ball to you it was ready to go ...   Maybe they pre-made a bunch of trophies and just handed them out as the season wore on ... or maybe they just used the same one each week as a TV prop ...   As advertised in Big League magazine in the mid-80s.  Or what viewers at home saw of it ... from memory it was an hour-long highlights package which aired two hours after the game had been played.  Your author remembers some dag calculating, including ads, that we only got to see 43 minutes of actual game time.  People weren't happy about it back then an

BY JAMES SMITH There are a lot of great rugby league books from the 1980s and 1990s which are often discussed in the various corners of social media chat and in nerdy rugby league circles – Arko’s and Junior Pearce’s books quickly come to mind. So it’s about time we paid homage to one of the less-talked about but still great works of league literature from that same era – Gary Belcher’s “Kangaroo Confidential – The Inside story of a sensational Tour”. The sensational tour he refers to is the Roo Tour of 1990.  If you’ve ever wanted to be a fly on the wall during one of these glorious sojourns from back in the day, this book will answer all your questions. Gary Belcher's magnificent book from 1990.  Badge takes the reader along for the wild ride which was the 1990 Kangaroo Tour, introducing us to his team-mates and allowing us to get to know them along the way. There are several narratives Badge follows throughout this day by day account, which makes for a fresh change from me

BY JAMES SMITH Long before the days of Team List Tuesdays, during which the fan base doesn’t believe the line-ups released by the current coaches anyway, we had “Big League on sale Thursdays”. If you wanted to know who was playing footy for whom at the weekend, you never knew until you consulted the Big League - until, from about the late ‘90s from memory, the papers began listing the teams on Wednesdays, cutting the grass of the official publication of the NSWRL. The magnificent work of art pictured below was filled in within the pages of the Round 24, 1986 edition of the great mag. You can tell this person did this every week. All the detail is there: players who were replaced or who had switched jersey numbers, tryscorers, penalty kickers, the penalty count, scrums … it’s beautiful. The Big League, long before Team List Tuesdays ruined all the fun ... And look at those extended benches – such a naming of fellows these days would send the Twitterverse into absolute meltdown …