Selectors,
You’ve always gotta be happy with the points from the bye, with both teams scooping them up this weekend due to a highly unusual combination of representative matches.
Australia and New Zealand playing in the first rugby league test match on the Sydney Cricket Ground in 22 years, and Victoria playing anyone, anywhere, for the first time in nine years.
Noted that there were no Tigers players in the Australian side, although they might have plucked a big brown bastard out of the Tigers reserves to play for the Kiwi’s, who knows?
And only four Swans players managed to get a guernsey for the Hall of Fame Tribute match; Rhino Keefe, The Goodes Train, The Great Irishman, and the Dalai Lama’s Football Representative in Australia -- and that out of two squads of 40 mind you!
Obviously the Chairman and the Three Wise Men in the respective codes took a cursory glance at the form of the eligible South Melbourne and Balmain players, and quickly nodded ruefully around the table “yep, done nuthin’, next”.
SYDNEY SWANS: Bye.
WESTS TIGERS: Bye.
Cannot let the passing of The Great Jack Gibson -- the original “Supercoach” – at the age of 79, go without mention.
Sadly the bloke was so far gorn in his last days that he never even knew that he’d been named as Coach of the Century.
Back in the olden days, in one of my former lives as a cub sports reporter, the rooms would always be approached with trepidation to interview Jack after a losing game.
He was on his last gig by then, and no one could quite work out why he was wasting his time coaching an under-credentialed under-performed Cronulla in ’86 & ’87.
As he himself said at the end of the ’87 season…”waiting for Cronulla to win a premiership is like putting the porch light on for Harold Holt”If they had lost, and you asked Jack for a detailed analysis of the team’s performance, he would always say:
“Done good under the circumstances”.
That’s it.
Nothing more.
You’d then be out of your mind knowing there was copy to file, an angry editor to placate, a beer to be drunk; and the coach had buttoned his lips
He delighted in that.
Apparently, he once said, “there is nothing in the contract that says a football coach has to be sane, or a good loser.”Jack taught me a very valuable lesson in journalism: “don’t quote me, son, unless you have spoken to me in the last five minutes”.And he’d always pick up the phone.
If they’d won, the press scrum would be beaming as Jack would give you enough quotes to fill two notebooks and enough bon mots to last a week!
Loved nothing more than “feeding the chooks” – but only when it suited him.
One of the last great football eccentrics, for mine.
And in the final analysis, he brought modern coaching to the game, and set the template for the meagre handful of Supercoaches who have followed.
Before Jack, the coach was little more than a manager, responsible largely for the half-time oranges and the post-match keg.
Well known for adopting some of the methods of American football; you couldn’t help but notice Jack many times at those legendary mid-week Sydney Swans luncheons at the Bourbon & Beefsteak Bar in The Cross in ‘86, getting in the ear of The Great Tommy “T-Shirt” Hafey, [four VFL premierships], for a few pointers.
He was happy to pick up winners in any code.
And he was one of those ones who don’t mind a drink in a crisis.
No one has, or ever could, argue with his five NSWRL premierships, and he was a scholar and a gentleman to boot.
Vale Jack Gibson.
“played strong, done good”.
