What ignited Turvey and Sterlo’s fierce rivalry
BY JAMES SMITH
The Canterbury-Bankstown
Bulldogs’ Steve Mortimer and the Parramatta Eels’ Peter Sterling were without doubt
the two dominant halfbacks of the 1980s in Australia.
Throughout that
period, their teams were either in grand finals, had just played in them or
were on their way towards yet another.
Yes, they played
behind two firesome packs of forwards and had magical outside backs whom helped
make them look extra-clever, but regardless, these two legends were the
dominant No.7s.
It can be fun to
look through old rugby league books and find out what players said about each
other at the heights of their playing careers, so let’s do that.
In chapter 10 of his
1998 book “Top Dog – The Steve Mortimer Story”, Turvey remembers playing against
Sterlo long before either of them had cracked into the bigtime Sydney comp.
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| The Covers of Peter Sterling's and Steve Mortimer's respective books, released back in the 1980s. |
“As far back as 1971, when I was playing with the Turvey Park under-15s, I can remember at the Tumbarumba knockout carnival when the class of Peter Sterling first became obvious to me,” Steve said in his 1988 book, which he worked on with the great Norman Tasker.
“Sterlo would later pinch
my Test match jumper from me on the 1982 Kangaroo Tour, and for much of our
careers after that, we were very intense rivals,” he continues.
“It goes without
saying here that I have huge respect for Sterling’s football. He was always
different to me. I relied on doing a lot of instinctive things in attack, where
Sterling placed greater emphasis on clever tactical kicking and a very high
defensive work rate.”
The two legends mush
have gotten together to compare notes before writing their respective books,
because in “Sterlo!” – The Story of a Champion”, Peter also jumps straight into
that rivalry with Turvey when discussing the greatest players he’d played with
and against throughout his career.
“There have probably
been a billion words written about the Sterling-Mortimer ‘rivalry’ over the seasons,”
Sterling wrote in his 1989 book, written with Ian Heads.
“I just want to say
this about Turvey. The thing I admired more than anything else about him was
the way he developed his own game over the years.
“He grew as an
individual, modifying the considerable skills he had to best suit the requirements
of the modern game.
